


to call myself beloved

by watery_sun



Series: reclamation [1]
Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Canon Lesbian Relationship, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Eventual Smut, F/F, Healing, Nightmares, No Lesbians Die, POV Alternating, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Romance, Sexual Dysfunction, Slice of Life, Slow Burn, Therapy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:34:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 116,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25553626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watery_sun/pseuds/watery_sun
Summary: The road of healing is long and winding, but not lonely - we walk together, even on our darkest days. Character studies of Ellie, Dina, Maria, and their various relationships, post-TLOU2.Title is from “Late Fragment” by Raymond Carver.Find me ontumblr.
Relationships: Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us)
Series: reclamation [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1894723
Comments: 234
Kudos: 389





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, friends! Welcome to my coping mechanism that is in response to this beautiful, controversial, profound game. There is no solid chapter estimate at the moment, but I expect we will go to at least five. I would like to post updates every two weeks, but I am in the season of my life where many important things are demanding my attention all at once, so we will see. Know that I love this story and this universe. Tags will be updated as we progress.
> 
> One more thing: I believe that we received a canonical name for only one of Jesse’s parents, but someone please correct me if I’m wrong.

The earth beneath her feet told a story.

At least that’s what Talia would have said. Dina could see it as clear as day - her sister squatting down on the trail, giving her finding a careful, wide berth. An animal track, a scrape in the dirt, something newly broken or newly whole underfoot. The earth was an open book, and she was one of its rare interpreters.

Dina circled the snapped branch that rested on the path. Not for the first time, she wished for her sister’s sharp eyes and surefootedness. Dina may have been better with a gun, but Talia could infer numbers and timing far in advance of their need for any weapon. 

Dina noted an impression stamped into the damp earth, a meter beyond the branch. She recognized the print of a Converse sneaker with far greater ease than she cared to admit. Her heart rose into her throat.

They’d not had rain in some time, and the sharp edges outlining the print were only slightly softened. A lucky find. Time reliably smoothed over roughness, but some things were immutable. 

Dina walked in an aimless circle as she considered the print. It felt strange to have tangible confirmation that the person she’d reached for each of the past three nights wasn’t here. The feeling was horrifically familiar. How many ghosts was it now?

Most times it was Ellie, gaze cast sparingly over her shoulder before walking into the shadows. Ellie’s words rang in her head, a chant that reflected Dina’s failure back at her: _I have to finish it, I have to finish it, I have to finish it..._ She’d sprint after Ellie, screaming, _No you don’t, you don’t have to-_ but water filled her mouth, her limbs were weighed down and rendered useless by mud and soaked clothing, and there was an arrow buried in her shoulder again.

Oftentimes it was her mother, the sharp angles of her shoulders and elbows softened by the shawl wrapped around her torso - a Hanukkah gift that Dina had scavenged from a body in Albuquerque.

But other times, more recently and surprisingly, she saw Talia. 

Talia, with her bright, serious eyes and her controlled, precise energy. Hair loose, standing in the light, not speaking. The ache of familiarity was enough to rouse Dina from deep unconsciousness. 

More and more, the ghosts of her past were summoned by the specter of her vanished lover.

Dina rubbed her eyes. As assured as she was that this was a fool’s errand, Dina felt equally assured that Talia would know the way forward if she were here. 

But she was not her sister. She divined nothing from the earth beneath her feet. Only the pressing negative space around her - in the print, in her home, in her bed. It weighed heavy in her throat, her mind, her heart.

The gray dawn was slowly giving way to a watery sunlight. Dina sighed heavily, turned on her heel, and set off back towards the fence.

* * *

Dina eased the screen door shut, holding her breath as its hinges moaned and creaked. She saw in her periphery a figure sitting at her table, but she did not startle.

“Early morning?” Susan appraised her over her reading spectacles. One hand rubbed at the dog-eared corner of the book in her lap, its spine creased by countless readings and rereadings. Dina craned her neck to see the title - _A Tale of Two Cities_.

“I needed to clear my head,” Dina replied, not untruthfully. She toed off her boots and made her way to the kitchen sink, finding it cleared. “I thought I told you that grandparents don’t have dish duty in my house?” She turned on the tap and let cool water course over her fingers.

Susan chuckled, turning a page in her book. “Take it up with Robin - he attacked them as soon as you and JJ went down. I swear, that man does chores like some folks go to church.”

“Too often or not at all?” Dina replied, and Susan chortled. Dina toweled her hands and leaned against the counter. “Is Robin sleeping in?”

“Not for long, hopefully. Long day ahead of us.” Susan glanced at her watch. “Maria should be arriving soon with the truck.”

At this, Susan sucked in a long breath. Dina noticed, not for the first time, the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth.

“I can’t tell you how grateful-”

Susan stopped her with a raised hand. “I know, dear. Save all that for when my husband offers to carry every single box in your house back to Jackson, one by one.”

A laugh issued from Dina’s lips, but she couldn’t ignore the warmth and anxiety that swelled in her chest in equal measure. _Jackson_.

“I should get JJ up,” Dina muttered, and made her way to the staircase without meeting Susan’s eye.

The soft sunlight had strengthened into bright beams that stretched across the bedroom. The room was almost bare, with boxes stacked against the far wall, but it still smelled the same - sandalwood and shavings and finish. JJ cooed in his crib, arms pumping energetically when his gaze found Dina.

“Hey, little man,” she whispered, gathering him into her arms. He rubbed blearily at his eyes and fisted his hands in her shirt. She bounced him on her hip and hummed an aimless tune, turning slowly to survey the boxes again. _Toys, Summer Clothes, Winter Clothes, Miscellaneous Electronics_. Dina marveled at how much of a life could be packed up into such a small space.

“Would you like to have a new room, JJ?” she whispered into her son’s hair, turning back towards the window. His gray eyes met hers and he smiled wide; Dina couldn’t help but smile in return.

“I’ll miss this one, though,” she murmured to no one in particular, running the fingers of her free hand over the slats of the crib, sanded down smooth: hand-carved, a gift that Robin had presented during one holiday season, a handful of months before Dina was due.

“Remember when Mummy couldn’t figure out how to set up the bed frame, and we slept on a mattress on the floor for a whole week?” He’d still been inside her then, a mass of cells that swam beneath Ellie’s hand splayed on her belly. Dina’s heart lurched.

What had Talia said? “Time gives and takes.” She had murmured this over their mother’s grave, a chasm and a bridge between them.

“It’s not fair,” Dina had shot back, hot tears streaming down her face. Talia had not disagreed.

As if sensing her distress, JJ lifted his pudgy arms - Dina lifted him closer so he could encircle her neck and rest his head by her collarbone. Outside the window, a plume of dust rose into her sightline, lightly obscuring a blue truck that wound its way towards the farmhouse.

JJ’s soft, sweet scent filled her nose, giving her - it wasn’t strength, not exactly. But it was something to hold on to. 

The onset of nostalgia was almost unnoticeable, but Dina recognized the same stability she had once felt surveying the farmhouse. It had just been a shell of what it was now, but it was treasured all the same. 

Exempt from their patrols while their injuries healed, Ellie had taken to going for long rides in the evening, Dina’s concerned looks and worried tone be damned. Dina’s fatigue became regular company, and she begrudgingly paused her apprenticeship in Weston’s repair shop when the smell of the soldering iron started triggering her gag reflex.

Dina soon made it abundantly known to Maria that Jackson - safe haven that it was - had a ways to go regarding community support of expecting parents. Not yet six years into its existence, the stronghold may have been formidably guarded and secure, but holes were still being patched - some that had been forgotten about in the mad rush after Outbreak Day, and some that had never been addressed in the first place. But in those first few months, with no apprenticeship, Dina stewed in this new feeling of aching uselessness.

She felt Ellie’s absence most of all. She’d do her best to wait up, watching the sun sink into soft purples and blues and finally blacks. She listened with intent and only heard the cicadas’ rhythmic buzz until she finally discerned movement in the shadows. 

“I just needed to clear my head,” Ellie would say sheepishly, wringing her hands as she emerged from the cool night air to mount the rickety steps of their porch. Dina would help Ellie shrug off her jacket and try to ignore the fresh wave of tiredness that would wash over her, leading them both to bed.

Dina moved unsteadily through her first trimester, and Ellie - for her credit - seemed to do her best to put her wanderings on hold. For Dina, her exhaustion sometimes meant that she fell asleep alone and at absurdly early hours. But when nausea roiled in her stomach and forced her to the bathroom in the early morning, Ellie was always behind her, holding her hair and rubbing her low back.

Among the morning sickness, fatigue, and the downright inscrutable cravings (“A peanut butter and pickle sandwich?” Maria had asked with a smile. “Really?”), it became more and more apparent that Dina was being forced to pick her battles. It rankled her to her core, that she couldn’t reach inside Ellie and parse out what was really going through her head. They were partners, weren’t they? As steadfast as Dina stood next to her in the face of infected and marauders, she now felt about as useful as a jammed pistol.

Her worries were mounting with these new regularities, but things seemed to take a turn for the better one evening. Dina walked down the road towards their cottage, thankful for the cool breeze that caressed the back of her neck. It was storm season, and she was trying to think of a creative jab at Wes so that he would cave and let her come assist when he did remote fixes, when the clatter of approaching hooves made her spin round. 

Ellie rode towards her, not with the worrying freneticism indicative of a threat, but with a casual swagger. Her hair was coming out of its bun, wisps lit bright red in the evening light. Even from this distance, Dina could see the bright smile in her eyes. Oh, how she’d missed it.

With a simple shift of her weight, Ellie pulled Tulip up and the palomino stopped on a dime, kicking up a cloud of dust. “G’day, ma’am,” she said, affecting a southern twang. “What’s a fine young lady like yourself doing ‘round these parts?” She was breathing heavily, face open with something close to happiness, and Dina had to restrain herself from giggling like a schoolgirl.

“Oh, just on my way home,” she replied, taking on a similar accent, though hers lacked the natural richness of Ellie’s. “Are you a marauder come to whisk me away?” She raised her voice into a high, breathy register and pressed a hand to her sternum in mock fear, but gazed through her lashes up at Ellie, clearly wanting nothing more than just that.

Ellie correctly interpreted the signal and grinned, dropping the act. “Come on, dork,” she said, leaning down to take Dina by the wrist and haul her up behind the saddle. “I’ve got something to show you.” Tulip snorted and stamped as if in exasperation, but Dina settled behind Ellie with ease. Then Ellie shifted her weight and clicked her tongue and they were away.

Dina suppressed the questions rising in her throat, namely _why?_ and _where?_ , in favor of wrapping her arms around Ellie’s waist and nuzzling between her shoulder blades. In her mind’s eye, she held the objects of her anxiety - Ellie’s relatively longer absences, the dark under-eye shadows that marred her face each morning, and her long silences - and wordlessly tucked them away. Ellie rode one-handed, steering through the streets of Jackson with ease while she traced the back of Dina’s wrist with her free hand.

Dina knew she was making a mistake - it loomed large in the back of her mind. She should at least be asking something - prying back the thick armor to see Ellie’s true state beneath. But what if she pushed a little too hard? What if Ellie shut her out completely?

Dina inhaled deeply and tried to quiet her frantic mind. Her lover was in her arms now - that was all that mattered. Perhaps this spontaneity would be good for the both of them - Dina gripped that thread with all her strength.

They must have exited the gates without issue - a feat that no doubt required some careful planning and the exchange of some significant patrol-related favors - because by the time Dina extracted herself from Ellie’s flannel, Jackson was behind them. 

“Shouldn’t take longer than half an hour,” Ellie said, answering Dina’s unasked question. “It’s actually just off a dirt road that goes south, but this gives us better cover.” 

Dina pulled back slightly, keeping her arms around Ellie’s waist. “So what exactly is _it_?”

“A surprise,” Ellie said. Dina could practically hear the smirk in her voice and her heart leapt - how long had it been she’d heard that teasing tone?

Ellie held the reins loosely and let Tulip pick her way over the rocky trail. Birch trees rattled around them as they crested one hill, then another. Dina rested her cheek between Ellie’s shoulders again and let herself be lulled into the calm, quiet headspace that had been evading her so easily.

“Okay, I suppose I can give you a hint.”

Dina hadn’t realized she’d been dozing off until Ellie spoke again, shaking her from her half-wakefulness. “Hmm?”

The terrain around them had smoothed, from rocky, rolling hills to flatter ground that sloped slightly downhill. They were still flanked by trees painted gold in the evening sun, but Dina thought she could see a clearing up ahead.

“What’s the best part of farming?” Once again, Dina was certain she could hear Ellie’s eyes twinkling.

She replied easily - after many repetitions, this one was well-known to her. “Hmm...gettin’ down and dirty with my hoes?” Ellie sniggered, then fell quiet again as they approached the edge of the wooded area.

They finally broke through the trees, and Dina was immediately reminded of every description of the ocean she had ever heard or read. Undulating waves of grass met her gaze and extended far beyond it, rolling gently in the afternoon breeze. Not a hundred meters past where they stood, breaking through the sea of dry vegetation that surrounded it, was a white, rickety farmhouse, splashed with orange in the light of the dying sun.

Whatever Dina had planned to say next died in her throat. Instead, words and an image came to her unbidden - Talia, backlit in soft, warm, light, reading from a Christian Bible she had found: _They rejoiced when the waves grew quiet. Then he guided them to the harbor they longed for._

Ellie shifted and dismounted, and Dina was jolted from her reverie. Nausea crested in her at the sudden perspective shift, but she sucked in a breath - scenting the cool, clear sweetness of the afternoon - and steadied herself. They left Tulip ground-tied at the edge of the forest, lipping at patches of grass.

“I cleared it last week, and did another run-through yesterday,” Ellie said, lacing her fingers through Dina’s and pulling her forward. She didn’t meet Dina’s questioning gaze, eyes fixed on the farmhouse. “There are exits from the basement, two on the ground floor, two from the roof if things get real bad. And I’ve asked Jacob if he can help us set up a perimeter fence.” She surveyed the surrounding land, voice flattening into a practical tone as if she were reciting a grocery list. 

“There were some infected out and about when I cleared the house, but all pretty fresh. No clickers or bloaters, and I checked over the area maps with Maria - no shoddy caverns or underground spots that we could see. So if we keep our construction to the daytime, I think we should be alright.”

Dina blinked. Jackson’s map library was well-guarded and difficult to access, especially the artifacts that were regularly updated with hotspots of infected. With no digital archives to speak of, the information contained therein was vital - all it took was one careless exploration “off the beaten path” for a newly-discovered fruiting corpse to become a much bigger problem.

“There’s game out here, and fish in that river year-round. Robin said the soil’s fertile enough for a vegetable garden.” At this Ellie scuffed the dirt with her boot and dropped her gaze, as if it embarrassed her to admit to seeking Robin out behind Dina’s back. 

Dina could only gaze up at Ellie, overcome by a sweet softness. Ellie still refused to meet her eyes, studying the dirt below her feet with great intent. The sheer, open happiness she’d had earlier in Jackson seemed tempered.

“You can’t take me all this way and expect me not to look inside!” Dina sassed, deciding to press on with humor. Ellie finally lifted her gaze, a smile breaking through, and nodded in the direction of the farmhouse. 

“Go on ahead.”

The porch creaked and groaned under Dina’s weight - it would need some stabilizing, and from here she could see that the roof needed patching. The front door hung a little lopsidedly on its hinges. She eased it open gently and stepped inside.

The unfurnished living room - that’s what she supposed it was - was shot through with beams of sunlight that stretched across its wooden floor. A light layer of dust had settled on most surfaces, disturbed in places where Dina assumed Ellie had pulled open drawers and rummaged through cabinets in her search for spores. She stepped further inside and a breeze rushed through the open windows, lifting faded lace curtains softly into the air.

“Oh…” Dina spun on the spot, arms opening and eyes cast ceiling-ward, feeling as if a rug had been pulled out from under her in the best way. Then her eyes found Ellie, who was gently closing the front door, and a wicked grin spread across her face.

“Babe,” she said, waiting until Ellie looked up before raising her eyebrows suggestively. “You gonna show me around, or will you have to catch me first?” Dina took a few quick steps towards the staircase, holding Ellie’s gaze.

“Dina…” Ellie seemed caught between genuine concern and mischief, eyebrows knotting together even while one side of her mouth lifted in a grin. “You know what Doc Josie said.”

“Oh, I’d hardly call this _vigorous_ exercise,” Dina responded. The backs of her shins met the staircase and she turned tail, throwing one more mischievous grin in Ellie’s direction.

Dina would have put money on Ellie rolling her eyes in response, but she smiled anyways when she heard her lover following, probably taking the steps two at a time to catch up. Dina reached back and found Ellie’s hand sightlessly. They landed on one side of a hallway from which several rooms branched, and Dina felt excitement rising in her as she pulled Ellie along.

“This…” Dina turned around so that Ellie’s arms went around her waist.

“Is…” She let their momentum carry them in a slow circle, still traveling down the hallway.

“ _Amazing_.” Finally, Dina pulled her down for a long kiss. She wound her arms around Ellie’s neck and sighed as her lover responded in earnest.

After she pulled away, Ellie rested her forehead against Dina’s. Her fingertips traced Dina’s jaw, and her eyes were heavy with hesitation.

“So…did I do good?”

Dina felt the weight of her question - that deep-seated need for validation, for confirmation of something that Dina tried to tell her every day. She turned it over in her mind and weighed it against Ellie’s disappearances, the tightness between her eyes that had not faded for months, her strained silences that took the place of her characteristic quietude.

“I love it,” she murmured, and Ellie let out a long breath, relaxing almost instantaneously. “And I love you.”

Their kiss was more heated than the previous one, and in retrospect Dina recognized her own desperation as she drank Ellie in. 

She remembered a desperate prayer ringing through her. _Just let us be happy_ . _Let this be enough_. 

As a child, Dina had much less faith compared to her mother’s and sister’s religiosity. She scoured for magazines while Talia and their mother attempted to recover what remained of religious texts from a hollowed out, still-smoking synagogue, or a collapsed church. She only grudgingly mentioned upcoming worship services to her friends at the commune, preferring their raucous hide-and-seek games that took them from the meager kitchens to the chicken coop. Dina often attended worship sporting angry, red claw marks courtesy of their laying hens, and made sure to dodge her mother’s sharp gaze.

Now, she wondered - and not for the first time - if, in her childish ignorance, she’d missed out on some universal secret to communing with the universe. What language could she not speak that would have allowed her to parse her loved ones’ hardships and present the best way forward? 

Because, in reality, it hadn’t been enough. It hadn’t been enough to keep Ellie from screaming in her sleep, from pacing the hallways each night, from turning her back on Dina one early morning and letting the door swing shut.

Talia had always spoken about what she called little kernels of truth - solid, unbreakable things that would be true no matter what happened around them, no matter how wild the wind or how furious the storm. Dina had scoffed at this, but became more and more appreciative of the idea as they made their way across the country in the wake of their mother’s death. With only themselves for solace and shelter, they leaned heavily on each other even as their loss engendered new conflict between them. Talia’s capacity for forgiveness seemed immense, a refuge even after the pettiest of their fights.

Dina imagined that morning again and again, each time preventing Ellie from leaving - each time pulling from her the tiny, hard kernel that Ellie perceived as truth, holding it in her hands and showing it for what it was: a lie, a blood-soaked fool’s errand.

_I never should have let Tommy into the house. I should have asked Maria what to do. I should have turned around and stopped her. I should have convinced her to eat more. I should have..._

Had she really given up on her lover so easily? Why hadn’t she tried harder? Dina wondered when she had let Ellie slip through her fingers - when she had let her turn from a safe harbor to a stranger. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


Susan, it turned out, was right - although Maria smartly barred Robin from taking anything of Dina’s back to Jackson himself, that didn’t stop him from loading most of Dina’s boxed possessions into the back of Maria’s dusty truck.

Dina just stood on the porch and twitched, looking for an in to help and being solidly rebuffed every time she found one. Susan’s eyes crinkled in amusement as she swayed back and forth, JJ asleep in her arms.

“He was exactly the same when I was pregnant with Jesse,” she said to Dina as they watched Robin and Maria place a rolled-up rug into the truck bed. “He always said, ‘Suze, the day you have to lift a finger to do anything while carrying that baby is the day that I’ve failed as a husband’.” Susan snorted. “I guess chivalry ain’t dead, not even in the post-apocalypse.”

Dina gave a small smile and wrung her hands. “I so appreciate the help,” she said for the third time that morning. “If there’s anything I can do to return the favor for you both, let me know.”

Susan shook her head and looked down at JJ - “Seeing my grandson grow up is certainly enough for me” - but Robin had heard her as well, and stuck his head out of the front door at an absurd angle to respond.

“When we’ve got you settled, Dina, I’d love it if you could help me rewire some greenhouses. Gotta get some fixes in before that first snow!”

“Let the girl have a little time, Robin,” Susan replied, not without mirth in her eyes.

“No, it’s okay. I want to help,” Dina said, forcing on a smile. It wasn’t a lie, not really. Her hands itched for something, anything, to keep them busy.

Packing almost finished, Dina found Maria in the living room. She surveyed the almost-empty house with her arms crossed, a practical air about her, but her face opened into a smile as she wrapped Dina in a hug.

“I’ll have Wes and the boys swing by to pick up the rest of the furniture,” Maria said. 

“Just what’s on the ground floor will be fine,” Dina replied. Maria pursed her lips and then nodded without pressing further. Not for the first time, Dina was thankful for Maria’s ability to read a room.

The walls were mostly bare now, with the exception of a ceramic hamsa that hung near the front door, which Dina approached reverently. She pulled it down from its place on the wall and cradled it in her palms. Her eyes shone in the bright sun and an ache rose in her chest.

It wasn’t as if home had been a very stationary place for most of her life anyways. Santa Fe and Jackson were practically utopias in their exceptions - stable, supportive communities that rallied around each other to lift up their weakest. If only Santa Fe had had Jackson’s walls and manpower. 

What was this but another necessary abandonment? She had tried to make her life here - she had learned the very bones of this house, what made it tick and made it creak. She dug through insulation to find old ports and outlets that would allow her to wire lighting in Ellie’s studio. She sanded splinters from the wooden floors so that her son could safely take his first steps. She toiled over their garden until it bore fresh vegetables, and all she could see was a blissful cycle of self-sustaining love and life.

And still, she had failed. 

* * *

Dina woke up in the passenger seat of Maria’s truck, pulling herself from the gnawing fog of worry that cycled through her head. When had they left the farmhouse?

“Just a few more miles to our rendezvous,” Maria said, noting Dina’s wakefulness. Dina nodded and turned her attention to JJ, asleep on her chest, drooling steadily onto her t-shirt.

Contrary to the openness of the farmhouse, columns of pine trees were closing in around them and the road was choked with vegetation, illuminated by intermittent patches of sunlight. It took a few seconds of slowing for Dina to realize that Maria had taken her foot off the gas. The truck came to an eventual stop not a hundred meters from what she recognized as the rendezvous point, despite its thorough camouflage. She turned to Maria questioningly.

“Just wanted some privacy,” Maria replied, turning off the ignition. She placed her hands in her lap and took a deep breath before turning to Dina.

“If you need anything, you know where to find me, alright?” Her tone was compassionate and firm.

Dina wasn’t surprised at the sudden one-on-one, especially from Maria, but regardless she suddenly found it difficult to swallow. “Of course,” Dina choked out. 

“I’ve got a whole community to think about,” Maria said, sighing. “But, whatever you need - space, no space, work, no work. We’ve got you, alright? You and that child of yours.” 

Dina rested her hand on JJ and looked up to meet Maria’s gaze, alight with so much soft-heartedness that she almost wanted to look away.

Her son deserved to grow up safe and protected, surrounded by children his age, adults who would watch over him, future companions who would see him through childhood and puberty and beyond. This much she knew, at least. This much, if not magnitudes more, she would give him.

Dina swallowed and nodded in silence, blinking away the tears that threatened to spill over.

“Alright,” Maria replied quietly, patting Dina on the shoulder. “Welcome back, hon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ll be sprinkling little references to some of my favorite stories (from various fandoms, mediums, etc.) throughout this work. 
> 
> The peanut butter and pickle sandwich is a favorite of [Grog Strongjaw](https://criticalrole.fandom.com/wiki/Grog_Strongjaw) from Campaign 1 of [Critical Role](https://critrole.com/faq/).


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you friends for the hits and kudos. Work was light last week, and this week is setting up to be particularly terrible, so here we are with a second chapter. I struggled to finish this one to my own satisfaction, but wanted to get it out into the world so I could move on.
> 
> Additional CW: This chapter contains some vague references to smut, and to suicidal thoughts - if folks would prefer additional things be tagged, please reach out.
> 
> We’ve still got some angst to wade through. Hang in there, y'all.

Seattle followed Ellie with the same creeping inevitability of the infected - slow, determined, implacable. 

All told, she’d surely walked halfway across the country by now, and still it came for her. 

She’d smash a runner’s skull in and, while scrambling to her feet, her hand would land on the cool wetness of moss. She’d put an arrow through a clicker’s skull and later yank it out of damp, rotting tree bark. The air was hot and dry and still she’d crawl through thick grass, lush with life, hiding her killing blow so well.

Their only-somewhat-whole threesome picked their way back to Jackson, and naively, she had let herself believe that Seattle was (literally) behind her. The journey weighed on them heavily; the task of transporting three critically-injured adults across the country was not one to take lightly.

Their days were a regular onslaught: Dina hotwiring old cars so they could transport Tommy with some ease, only to have them break down ten or twenty miles later; Ellie clumsily scouting ahead to try to pick off infected as silently as possible, and holding her breath at every squeeze of the trigger, praying that it would count; and the nightly ritual of unpacking and repacking Dina’s shoulder wound, and tending to Tommy the best they could with their clumsy field first aid and an old medical textbook that Dina had found in a musty bookstore.

By the end of each day, Ellie was so beyond bone-tired that she’d sleep hard, curled around Dina, and for once the darkness of her slumber was complete: dreamless and quiet. For all their trials, Ellie was privately grateful that the immense fallout from Seattle was enough to keep her nightmares at bay.

Her reprieve didn’t last long. The moment she stepped back behind Jackson’s walls, she felt like a stranger.

At first, she hadn’t understood why. Jackson’s residents responded with open kindness at their return. The sea of their comfort was meant to wash over their bodies and tend their wounds, wipe their eyes, and strip the ragged clothes from their backs. Ellie let Dina and Tommy be buoyed ahead of her, but something made her continue to cling to the dark ocean floor. 

Ellie was no stranger to violence - no child of the apocalypse could be. The hands that reached for her were scarred and rough and strong, just as comfortable drawing a gun or bringing a hammer down for the sake of survival. Still, she pushed them away resolutely, and realized why with growing nausea.

It was because she had wielded the sword, instead of trying to stop the arc of its swing. She was so desperate to finally see the blooming flowers of her revenge that she tilled the soil with the blood of anyone who stood in her way. And here she was in Jackson, fucking _Jackson_ , where they had worship every week and children that ran through the community gardens and dances every Sunday night. Jackson, where humanity had finally reclaimed some scraps of its dignity and compassion.

She was antimatter meeting its counterpart, both exploding in their mutual annihilation.

_We’re shitty people, Joel. It’s been that way for a long time._

She hadn’t really understood what Tess had meant back in Boston. She did now.

Still, she tried to go through the motions as best she could. She had to, for Dina, for their unborn child. 

There was no body to bury in Jesse’s grave in Jackson - in their rush to leave Seattle, they had been forced to leave him behind, a fact that still stung Ellie deeply. Dina wept openly as they stood next to the grave they had dug in Seattle, her tears mixing with the rain that drizzled around them. For Ellie, the emptiness that had gnawed at her since Abby had left her and Dina bleeding out in the theatre returned in full force. For the first time since coming to Seattle, she wondered if she had chosen a path that had no way out.

Jesse’s parents were kind - too kind, Ellie thought. They wrapped Dina in long embraces and promised that the two of them would always have a family here. Susan kept trying to catch Ellie’s eye during this exchange, and Ellie continued to evade.

She watched Dina give her eulogy but barely heard a thing, the words fuzzy and distorted as the bodies of the funeral attendants pressed around her. Too close, too close, too close.

Her failures closed in around her with similar urgency. She’d had it in her grasp - she’d been inches away from the one thing she needed. And she paid for it, horrifically, with Dina’s shoulder, Tommy’s brain, Jesse’s life. 

As the days wore on, something wound its way into her, curling up from the base of her spine and into her skull until it was all that she could see or feel: white-hot self-loathing.

When Maria sat her and Dina down in her office and told them that they could have as much time as they needed, that they already had enough folks going out on patrols and wouldn’t need help in the fields for another month or so, Ellie rose out of her chair and stormed out. When Maria tried to stop her, Ellie snapped back with ferocity - _I will not be useless anymore!_

Maria refused to yield, so Ellie started taking matters into her own hands, riding out past the walls of Jackson during the day and picking off infected with her rifle. As an added benefit, she avoided most of Jackson’s busiest, most congested hours.

The residents were just trying to fix her, same as when she and Joel had arrived in Jackson after Salt Lake. The same prying smiles, the same worry-lines at the brow, the same obligatory concerned gazes that held her eye a little too long. 

None of it could give her what she truly wanted.

“Rest,” Dina would say, tugging on her sleeve to bring her back to bed, and Ellie so desperately wanted to say, _I’m trying, I’m trying so hard_. The words died in her throat.

Rest of any kind failed to sate the frenetic energy that coursed through her morning and night, that drove her outside Jackson’s walls for hours on end, unable to quell the urge to _do_ something. Her body had failed her in Seattle, had failed to do the one thing she’d desperately dreamed of for weeks on end. Her mind continued to betray her, playing and replaying the same grisly reel over and over again each night. She was an animal in a cage, and she needed _out_.

She had been elated when she’d stumbled upon the farmhouse, convinced that making a space of their own, away from Jackson, would be enough to ward off the nightmares and hallucinations that were creeping back in. Enough to bridge the gap that she knew was slowly widening between herself and Dina.

She knew, inevitably, that Dina would need a guarantee - would need to know that Ellie would be with her, with their child. And Ellie, still riding the high that came with the chance to put down roots, the chance to start over, whispered promises against Dina’s skin with the closest thing to confidence that she could muster.

 _We’re done with that now_.

The sting of her betrayal and her failings went deep. She had been so naive, and so wrong.

Ellie had worked so hard to fortify their new home against external threats, channeling her desperation into this new outlet, that she’d forgotten about the pain she carried. She watched in horror as it rubbed off on everything around her. Seattle was no longer her private torment. It followed her into her home as well.

It breathed as she breathed. It wormed its way under her skin and curled around her ribs. Dina would rise up on her toes to kiss Ellie on the mouth and a jolt of panic would flare in her gut. What if it passed into Dina, slid down her throat and festered there? The cordyceps fungus was not the only contagion in Ellie’s world. For a time after JJ was born, her heart would ache as her son cried, but she would stop herself before she touched him.

She itched whenever she was stationary. She shingled the entire roof of their farmhouse one weekend, alone. When Maria told her that she was a better handyman than Tommy, Ellie grimaced and shoved her hands into her pockets. Her palms stung with splinters. 

She threw herself with great abandon into the project that was renovation, starting early and working late into the night. The house took shape underneath her busy hands, grew and transformed and shone in the sun - but she couldn’t shake something that Jacob had said while they appraised an old, rickety cottage in Jackson that would likely have to be demolished: “You can make all the fixes you want, but it won’t do shit if the foundation’s rotten.”

The thought sent another wave of bitterness through Ellie as she sighted the rabbit down her scope. It nibbled at dry grass, nose twitching, but before Ellie could pull the trigger there was a scuffle and the rabbit was away - a brown blur was hot on its heels, a coyote or a dog.

“God fucking dammit,” Ellie cursed under her breath, leaning back in her hide. How long had it been since she’d last found fresh game? Her upper back and shoulders ached from the prone position she had taken. She stood with a grimace, rifle slung over her shoulder. It was getting dark anyways. Maybe she’d have better luck tomorrow.

She scrambled down the rock shelf where she’d lain in wait for the past two hours, shaking some of the feeling back into her limbs. Instinctively she wanted to chide herself for being behind schedule, until she remembered that she wasn’t “behind” anything at all. She could spend all fucking day shooting rabbits in the sun if she wanted to.

She kicked noncommittally at a patch of dry weeds as she continued downhill. Her mouth was dry and fuzzy and a headache pounded in her skull, exacerbated by each step she took, and she knew that she hadn’t drunk enough water again. 

A few minutes passed before Ellie paused to admire the sun setting low in the sky. The sandstone around her was painted in dark oranges pushing towards reds. In the east, a few stars twinkled where the sky had already darkened into deep purples and blue blacks. For the hell of it, she sighted down her scope towards the distant mountain range that had been her target for the past few days. What she wouldn’t give to climb out of the desert.

For all its beauty, Ellie wasn’t used to being so out in the open, and a now-familiar creep of unease settled over her as she made her way back to her camp, set in a shallow rock overhang. 

Her sleeping roll did little to cushion her head against the hard sandstone, but she almost always woke early anyways - from nightmares or from sheer restlessness, she couldn’t tell anymore. Things woke early in the desert, trying to get their requisite hunting or mating or migrating finished before the sun could scorch them, and Ellie was soon pulled into this natural schedule as well.

It had been several weeks since she had crossed from the jagged, mountainous Los Padres forest into the arid, dry flatlands that would take her towards the heart of the country. She meandered aimlessly, not wanting to admit to herself that a north-eastern route was her goal, but heading in that general direction regardless. Los Padres had Jackson’s terrain with less of Jackson’s bitter cold, and she missed her campsites in tight-knit forests that didn’t leave her waking up shivering. But here she was, regardless.

She had to suppress a scoff when she came upon a decrepit sign that told her that she was walking through Death Valley. _Death fucking Valley, seriously?_ Sometimes she wondered if anyone alive pre-Outbreak had truly appreciated the feral inelegance of fighting day-to-day for your survival.

At least the wide-openness of the desert made for good star-gazing - the best Ellie could remember. She counted more shooting stars than she had ever seen in her life, and traced the silver expanse of the Milky Way each night with her remaining fingers. 

From time to time, she sheepishly allowed herself to sink into the long-abandoned fantasy of blasting aliens with Daniela Star at her side. As she drifted off and lost touch with the ground beneath her, she imagined herself floating in anti-gravity, blaster held loosely in her left hand (with all five fingers, thank you), surrounded on all sides by the overwhelming beauty of star dust and space. 

God, what she wouldn’t give for _that_ impossible view.

* * *

The temperature dropped steadily as she gained elevation, and stayed consistently cold as she crossed into Nevada. Sandstone gave way to scrub grass and dry shrubbery and expansive desolation, pockmarked by low, rolling hills. It was with less awe and more exasperation that she considered the desert that stretched out around her, with all the hallmarks of a hot, arid, lifeless place - and snow on the ground.

Snow, in a fucking desert. If she wasn’t careful, she’d freeze to death in the night before she could faint from dehydration during the day. The fucking dualities.

Ellie was no stranger to life’s inherent contradictions - she was, in fact, overtired of it. 

Here she was, the cure for mankind, alive and well and kicking - and able to do absolutely nothing about it. Not to mention the blood on her hands that stained up to her elbows. She walked through the broken world she’d been meant to save, with death following closely at her heels.

She had heard whisperings of Firefly activity on her journey to Santa Barbara, and had half a mind to track them down and give herself over. 

It was such an attractive idea that occurred to her while sitting there in the fog and surf, the brine stinging her hand and seeping into her skin. She imagined her broken body prone under the over-bright lights of an operating room, a masked and scrubbed surgeon lifting a mass from her open skull, elation and relief sweeping through the room. And, finally, rest.

But that surgeon was fucking dead, the chances of synthesizing a vaccine back down to zero. The Fireflies weren’t an option anymore.

And so here she was, an impossible thing: she should have died for this world, but it just kept coughing her back up. And with the miracle of her immunity now rendered moot, well, there wasn’t much else to give, was there?

“It isn’t yours,” Dina had said that night in Seattle, eyes twinkling with attempted humor. But biological impossibilities aside, Ellie had never even entertained the possibility. Any child of hers would wither and die in the womb, she knew, as much of a husk as its progenitor. That JJ was so vibrant and sweet could only be Dina and Jesse’s doing.

And yet, Dina had welcomed her into her body so earnestly that Ellie almost felt embarrassed. The weeks after they had moved into the farmhouse were filled with their desperate coupling, as if they were trying to make up for lost time. Ellie lost count of the number of times she let her tool apron fall to the ground so she could press Dina up against the kitchen counters they were polishing, the walls that they were re-papering, even the fence posts that had just been driven into the earth.

By the time their furniture started arriving, they’d made love in every room in the house - including one afternoon when Jacob was fixing their porch, and Dina locked the door of the upstairs bathroom they were supposed to be plumbing, Ellie whispering huskily to her that she had to be quiet while she sank her fingers into her.

Being in control gave Ellie something solid to hold onto, a distraction from the truth. Ellie knew she didn’t deserve the body beneath her hands, the body that writhed and gasped and gave endlessly. 

Ellie waited with bated breath for her image of Dina to corrupt - she dreaded rolling over one morning and seeing short hair and water-soaked clothes and blood, instead of the sleeping body of her pregnant lover. The hallucination never came to, of course - Dina was untouchable, even sacred. She shone all the brighter as Seattle choked Ellie’s vision, until her days were nothing more than swinging from extreme to extreme. 

She wanted to believe that Dina could somehow burn away those choking vines, even just by being next to her. In retrospect, it was now painfully clear that they were both desperately searching for something that they could not give the other.

Stupid, stupid fucking mistakes.

She hated the fucking desert.

* * *

In retrospect, her luck had to run out sometime.

One didn’t just walk several hundred miles with a hole in their side that was probably infected and two missing fingers and _not_ , say, trip over a tree root and tumble into a ditch.

Or almost walk right into a hulking bear and her fuzzy cubs.

Or crash through the roof of an underground cavern, disturb the local flora and fauna, and then sprint away from said local flora and fauna after fumbling her pistol, losing half of her rations in the process.

Ellie had certainly been kept on her toes after crossing into Utah. 

She lowered her scope and sighed, surveying the snowy mountain slope that rose before her, transected by animal tracks and a bubbling brook that had not yet frozen over. 

Her right ankle was continuously throbbing now, and her puncture wound had opened up again - beneath her heavy jacket, she could feel hot blood seeping through her layers. She needed to get off her feet. Just for a bit, she told herself - just a little rest before she continued on.

Ellie fished her rain slicker out of her pack, placed it over the snowdrift that had formed at the brook’s edge, and flopped backwards onto it with a dramatic “Whoosh!” for added effect. Her body’s imprint in the snow made a natural seat, and she stretched her legs out in front of her and groaned.

If only she had a horse. Tulip would eat this route for breakfast - Ellie had never sat on a more surefooted trail horse in her life.

Things hadn’t started that way, of course. As a youngster, Tulip shied at the smallest things and constantly needed reassurance that she was in the right. Where some others would lose patience, Ellie gave this and more without complaint. It made her grin with deep satisfaction when Tulip would stand still when a distant gun went off, back hoof cocked in utter relaxation; or quietly cross a shallow creek through which she had once dragged Ellie at a full gallop.

The horse reflected only the patience, tact, and time that Ellie had invested so thoroughly. Tulip was the only mirror that Ellie could look into without flinching. Maybe this was why most of her good dreams, as few and far between as they were, were of her on horseback - the wind tangling her hair as she galloped across a field alight in a sunset, surrounded on all sides by an undulating field of gold -

Ellie woke with a gasp. 

The cool mountain air rushed into her lungs and she sucked it down. What in the fuck-

The sun had almost completely gone down, an inky blackness rapidly swallowing up the mountainside. 

_Fuck_. She’d fallen asleep, and was completely exposed no less.

Ellie scolded herself for losing her vigilance so easily as she snatched up her pack, slicker, and guns. She spared a last glance at the babbling brook before stumbling downhill to the edge of a forest, moving as soundlessly through the snow as she could.

Her head buzzed and her heart was still in her throat - she maintained a tight grip on her pistol, if only to keep her tethered to the here and the now. Simultaneously, exhaustion weighed heavily behind her eyes, her right leg burned sharply with each step, and Ellie feared that if she stopped moving before she made camp, she would collapse and not be able to get up again.

Her left shoulder bounced off the hard surface of a tree trunk and she cursed, but still leaned against it, if only for a few seconds. She had to get further into the forest. If she got out of this alive, she swore she was gonna…

Gonna do what, exactly? 

Dina would not have her, there was no doubt in her mind. Surely JJ was starting to speak or walk by now, placing milestone after milestone behind him, gathering the momentum of growing up without her by his side. Maria’s marriage was in tatters because of her, and by extension, surely all of Jackson knew of what she had done by now. 

She had slammed so many doors on so many people. There had been one person who kept coming back no matter what - and he was gone.

He was dead _because_ he’d always kept coming back.

Ellie gasped, a twisted sob issuing from her throat.

She missed the ease of her friendships. She missed her son, curled on her chest. She missed the casual, soft intimacies and the passionate, serious moments she shared with Dina. Somewhere deep inside her, past all lies and half-truths and evasions, a soft animal cried for the steadfast security of home.

Would home even have her?

She was as aimless as a dying satellite, being pulled in by Jackson’s gravity, destined to burn up before she could make landfall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The line “God, what she wouldn’t give for _that_ impossible view” is a reference to the [boygenius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boygenius) song [“Me and My Dog”](https://genius.com/Boygenius-me-and-my-dog-lyrics): 
> 
> _I wanna be emaciated /  
>  I wanna hear one song without thinking of you /  
> I wish I was on a spaceship /  
> Just me and my dog and an impossible view_
> 
> The “soft animal” imagery in the last few paragraphs is a reference to Mary Oliver’s poem [Wild Geese](http://www.phys.unm.edu/~tw/fas/yits/archive/oliver_wildgeese.html):
> 
> _You do not have to be good.  
>  You do not have to walk on your knees  
> for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.  
> You only have to let the soft animal of your body  
> love what it loves._


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends! Thank you all so much for the hits, bookmarks, kudos, and incredibly kind comments. I've greatly enjoyed reading every single one of them. Please enjoy Chapter 3!

When Maria was twelve years old, her brother misjudged a curb on his skateboard and changed her life forever. 

At least that was what she liked to tell Tommy, as they watched the sun sink low behind the mountains and passed a beer between them. Maria would lean back on her hands and stretch the soreness from her legs, trying to stave off stiffness for as long as possible. Tomorrow would bring another long day of slowly, slowly gathering the disparate pieces of an old, shattered world and trying to make them into something new. 

But for now, softened by the setting sun and alcohol - and thoroughly enjoying weaving her own embellishments through the story - Maria looked directly into a past that was both a world and a hair’s breadth away.

Both Will and the skateboard had gone flying, one crumpling onto the sun-warmed cement, and the other clattering down the street. Maria screamed for their mother and abandoned her chalk on the sidewalk, leaving a half-finished flower, sprouting garish purple and pink petals, to dissolve in the coming rain.

Maria worried at the hem of her shirt as their mother wove through traffic and waited impatiently for tourists to cross the busy streets before - finally - reaching Candler Hospital. A short wait and an x-ray revealed not much to run home about: no surgery required, just a splint and a stern order for no more roughhousing. 

The abnormally-cool, filtered hospital air and pervasive, clinical smells were unnerving to Maria, but what was not unnerving in the slightest was watching the physician, bent slightly with age, meet Will’s eyes with a smile and an assured statement that he would be back to his skateboarding antics soon enough. Will had been young enough to still possess the eager, youthful optimism that prevents one from seeing the true distance of the journey they are on - and so his pained, worried expression soon softened to relaxation, and even casual joy at what his friends would think of his cool new splint. Dr. Rose grinned at this and added that, while he wouldn’t end up with a cool scar from this, he could still collect his friends’ signatures on said splint.

Maria, who had switched from worrying at her shirt to chewing her bottom lip raw, watched in awe as the fear and pain in her brother’s face all but vanished, replaced by his usual bright, open happiness. What was this incredible power that had wiped away her brother’s distress in a matter of minutes?

The examination appeared to be wrapping up, and Maria rapidly wiped her nose with her sleeve and tugged on Dr. Rose’s white coat, asking - no, she didn’t want a piece of candy, thank you, she was wondering if the older woman would please divulge her secrets.

On the drive home, she asked her mother if she could dig up her father’s old medical textbooks. Maria grinned at the murmured assent, not noticing her mother’s knuckles whitening as she gripped the steering wheel ever tighter.

Like all young people, Maria drifted in and out of new interests with the same perpetual motion of a river. Sometimes she swirled in one place for so long that she thought she would drown in the sheer amount of  _ doing _ there was to be done. Then she would naturally drift away, dragging large or small swaths of detritus in her wake, to collide with or be subsumed fully by whatever was next in her path. Hers was an energetic childhood and pubescence, encouraged by her home life’s relative stability, and her mother and brother’s persistent support. 

Regardless of wherever she landed on the shore, there was one constant in the back of her mind - Dr. Rose’s kind words and quick assessments that assuaged Will’s pain as easily as anything. 

Maria turned this instance over and over again in her head, as she lay awake listening to the sounds of her mother crying quietly in the middle of the night. It settled deep into her, into her bones, until it became part of her reason for living.

Or at least, this was what she recounted most often to Tommy. She expected him to scoff at her, to say something about silly childhood dreams that never end up being true - but if anything, he looked at her with even more awe and warmth in his eyes.

“That’s some kind of divine intervention, I reckon,” he murmured, gaze never leaving hers. “That this messed up post-apocalypse would get someone with your heart.” He tapped her collarbone for emphasis.

Now it was Maria’s turn to scoff. Of all things that she had witnessed in the years since the world had folded in on itself, fate was not one of them. The very few certainties of this new life were that some would hurt each other, and some would help. Outbreak may have cut her dreams of nursing school short, but Maria was determined to end up on the right side of things.

So here she found herself, new lover by her side, surveying the spoils of their handiwork, the result of long hours spent toiling in the sun with minimal rest. Slowly, a compound was taking shape under their hands - fertile ground that could bear the fruit of a community. 

But for now, they could lay back for a moment, and recount the winding, twisting turns that had taken them from the old world to the now.

At times, Maria chided herself for not just holding so tightly to a pre-Outbreak memory, but reaching for it over and over again to shore up her new purpose, her new journey. They were, for all intents and purposes, on an alien planet. How useful was it to drag the placid, meandering calm and nostalgia of her old life into the violent, vicious present?

Tommy seemed to be testament enough to this. The only relic from the old world that he revealed to her was a picture of his brother and niece, faded and wrinkled with many unfoldings and refoldings. Maria felt whiplash at the sight of their easy smiles, the girl’s grass-stained soccer jersey, the glinting trophy held in her hands. There had been so much space in the before-times, so much time for menial things that were allowed to become the center of a pre-Outbreak world: a soccer game, a birthday party, a sleepover.

Tommy’s eyes misted over as he recounted, in clipped words, the night when the end of the world came knocking. Pain and sorrow bled into his voice, and Maria, for her part, didn’t press any further after he cut the story short in Texas - despite the fact that he’d come upon her in Colorado, just outside the Denver QZ. Half a world away, for all she knew. There was no point in pushing - only time and patience and trust would slowly push these splinters out.

He had been forthcoming enough about Joel, more so than Maria had expected anyone to be given such circumstances. All he had revealed initially was that they hadn’t spoken in years, and Maria couldn’t help herself as she mentally cataloged this away as another fracture.

But in spite of whatever burdensome pain he carried, Tommy attacked their day-to-day work with the glee and relish of someone who had not witnessed the end of the world with his own eyes. He was a continuous spout of - Maria hesitated to call it optimism, surely not in this world. But it was something she had not witnessed in another person in years: hope, tentative and flickering but nurtured all the same.

This was why they had drifted together, hadn’t they? Because Maria believed in the fixing, in the process and all its toils and practicalities; and Tommy believed in the light, in the end of the journey, the worth of it all. Together they were a brilliant team, partners in every sense of the word, slowly pulling the torn pieces of this world back together.

_ Brilliant team, my ass. _

Maria blinked in the gray light of the early morning, pulling herself from the haze of wistful memories. Birdsong reached her ears and a dog barked in the distance. She rolled away from the empty side of the bed and gave herself a minute to mentally set down the artifacts of her past, unwittingly dusted off in that space between sleeping and waking. If she wasn’t careful, she’d sink further and further beneath their tantalizing waves until she drowned.

The day was hers. She had to remember that.

Maria felt a little more like herself as she rinsed her empty coffee cup and stepped out into the brisk morning air. Her second was sending out patrols this morning, and Maria would receive them later in the afternoon - this left her time to review inventory, starting at the clinic, conscious of the wave of traders that would come through Jackson before the first snow hit.

Doc Josie would set Maria straight. Another pre-Outbreak transplant, Josie preached practicality and compassion in equal parts, setting aside the ruthless prioritization that had possessed some medical professionals in the wake of Outbreak. Josie believed that her oaths applied to this new world as much as they had when she’d donned her white coat in her first week of medical school. 

Maria couldn’t help but see Dr. Rose in Josie’s bedside manner, her efficiency, the brisk preparedness with which she received Jackson’s pain each day. The childhood memory was old and fuzzy and tattered by now, but Maria was heartened to see evidence of this deep compassion both before and after Outbreak.

Low, gray clouds cast Jackson in a wavering, watery light as Maria made her way towards the center of town. She had taken a special liking to Jackson in the early hours of the morning. The cool quietude, the pervasive, sleepy silence: here was a piece of the old world that she would gladly have again and again.

Maria spotted Robin making his way towards the communal pantry and raised her hand in greeting. His response came a half-second delayed, after he blinked blearily and recognition dawned across his face.

“Haven’t slept like this since Jesse was born,” Robin said apologetically, shifting his basket of potatoes to his other side. Maria grinned and waved him off. 

“Better rest up before our inventory later today - no more arithmetic mistakes, eh?” Robin chuckled and rolled his eyes, clearly interested in putting this one to bed.

“It was one time,” he countered, a grin sliding across his face. “I’m sure we’d have found something creative to do with a massive surplus of pumpkins. Just imagine the jack-o’-lantern carving contests come Halloween!”

“Yes, I would love to see a clicker’s face rendered in loving detail across a giant gourd,” Maria replied dryly. Robin’s chuckle burst into full-blown laughter.

She pressed on. “How’re our two newest arrivals?”

Robin’s easy smile remained. “JJ keeps us all on our toes, as you can imagine. Decided he didn’t like peas one morning and scared our cat nearly half to death. Got into Suze’s painting supplies and decided our living room needed a solid redecorating.” He shrugged as if none of this was surprising. “Par for the course in this family.”

Maria let herself chuckle along with him, but once they had quieted down, it was back to business. “And how about his momma?”

Robin was her friend, but he was also her window into Dina’s headspace, and Maria knew it was important for her to peer in more often than not. 

Robin drew a sigh and ran a hand through his thick, black hair. Maria waited. She could count on this man to be honest with her.

“Taking care of that baby is a full-time job, you know? Even with Suze and I helping out. But she keeps pushing herself, asking for extra shifts at the greenhouses, digging through those old plans to rewire some of our safehouses. She practically fell asleep at the dinner table last night.”

Maria nodded and studied her boots, a feeling of not-quite-surprise washing over her. “I’ll talk to her. I’m serious about that rest now, you hear?”

The town was waking up around them, and Maria waved goodbye to Robin, mentally turning over his remarks as she went along.

It felt like a cliche, to remind herself that in spite of whatever Dina had seen or done in Seattle, she was still just a child herself. Maria knew enough history to see the common pattern, how the young and vulnerable were dragged into currents of anger and conflict, that turned them into something they never should have been. She had wanted to believe that Jackson, her Jackson, could be a shield against the beasts that consumed the innocent and coughed up the hardened, the battle-worn, the tired and cynical.

But then her own community had been the beast, sent reeling in tragedy and heartbreak. Her own husband was swept up in this current, pulling him further and further away from what had once been their stronghold. Even when he returned, he was a warped, distorted version of the man who had built up Jackson with her. 

His return to leadership capacity within Jackson was out of the question. Maria’s immediate priority was tempering the new blows to morale that her community would sustain. The mortal wounding and near deaths of three of Jackson’s best guns was information that had to be disseminated carefully, alongside Maria’s forceful message that they would take care of their own before condoning anymore revenge missions. To her relief, the community seemed just as exhausted as she was, ready to welcome the injured back into the fold and take a long rest.

In her most selfish moments, Maria almost wished someone had put up a fight. The resulting pervasive calm only made more space for her expansive worry at the rapid disintegration of her marriage.

But she had made her choice. Her private heartbreak was just that: private. Even if one of its pillars was crumbling, the safety and stability of her community depended on the strength of her resolve - and this she would give to them, as she always had.

* * *

Maria learned rapidly that not all fractures were stable. Some healed in malformed, incomplete ways; some needed to be broken all over again and reset before they would heal straight. As people trickled behind Jackson’s walls, Maria saw more and more iterations on humanity’s greatest sins and greatest compassions.

Optimistic as it was in those very early years, Maria’s goal did little to temper the shock of seeing the kinds of people who walked through Jackson’s gates. At the end of a long day, she often had to quiet her hands from shaking, and would toss and turn erratically in her attempts to find sleep, turning these new stories over and over in her head. If she had expected this experience to help her process the seismic shift between pre-Outbreak and now...well, she was more naive than she had realized.

But slowly, her tolerance grew. Slowly, she gleaned a deeper appreciation for what “family” could look like, more nuanced than anything she had seen as a child in Savannah. The singletons and pairs and groups of people who found their way through Jackson’s gates were as great a testament as any to resilience, creativity, and pure grit.

There was a group of five young men who stumbled upon Jackson one evening, raucous and worried and easily detected by Maria’s scouts. Two of them all but carried an injured third to the base of the gate, while the other two scanned the surrounding woods nervously, rifles perched on their shoulders. 

Maria welcomed them inside with haste, and watched as the injured boy and the friends supporting him collapsed and wept openly at the sight of a sanctuary. She could see it in the tiredness in their eyes, the tightness on their brows, that they had almost given up on a safe place - a place where they could set down their weapons and shrug the burdensome anxiety of survival from their shoulders.

The injured young man - Jacob - healed well from his broken leg and was soon pestering Maria (as kindly as he could, she supposed) about storm-proofing their stables. His father had been a construction worker in Oklahoma, he told her, and had instilled in him the same dedication and attention to detail that resulted in the town of Arcadia retaining all of their livestock during the previous year’s tornado season. 

Maria countered that Arcadia could be wiped off the map by a stiff breeze, but gave Jacob free rein of their stables nonetheless. With Tommy still leading daily patrols to clear infected, she more than appreciated the extra hands.

Not a week later, two more survivors washed up on Jackson’s shores: a blonde woman and her brunette wife, who had miraculously made it out west all the way from Maine, after their QZ fell to marauders. They were quiet upon their arrival and quieter still in the days that followed, even after Maria settled them into a newly-fortified cottage. 

But Maria knew that things flourished with patience, and soon enough she found the brunette, Marianne, in the town square with an easel, a sun-drenched Jackson taking shape under her paintbrush. Heloise commented to Maria in private that she had yet to see her wife so calm since they’d started moving west - that she’d watched in fear as Marianne’s usually prolific stream of art dried to a trickle.

It felt silly, Heloise admitted sheepishly, to care so much about a couple of paintings when the world convulsed and collapsed around them. Maria countered that in this world, anything that gave them back some sense of humanity - anything that stepped beyond the primal drive for survival - was worth preserving.

It went without saying that there was beauty in their world, but also danger, and Maria was glad to create a space where the former could outweigh the latter.

As their community grew and attracted more and more stragglers, Maria appreciated the presence of another pre-Outbreak survivor: a man with a shock of red-brown hair who introduced himself as Caleb. Once she got past the cat curled around his shoulders and the intimidating, dusty books he pulled from his pack, Caleb proved to be a sharp and intelligent conversation partner, regaling Maria and other townsfolk with tales of his former life as a professor of physics at the University of Denver. 

Maria had established an unspoken conversational rule that forbade too much prying into their new arrivals’ pasts - but even she let it fall to the wayside as she ribbed Caleb about how he made it to Jackson with nary a gun on him. Caleb simply replied that he had been resourceful enough to dig up a lone flamethrower in an abandoned QZ, and spent the rest of his journey lightning up any infected past whom he could not sneak. At Maria’s raised eyebrows, he simply quipped around his German accent: “Survival of the smartest, eh,  _ mein Freundin _ ?”

The smartest, the most tenacious, but also the kindest and most compassionate - a more and more frequent phenomenon as the community enfolded more young survivors. They had only ever known the post-apocalypse, but they seemed dead-set on the world they wanted instead.

Maria felt a deep strum of relief every time a young person made their way to Jackson’s gates. She was not so naive to believe that this was a sign that the outer world coughed them up for lack of threats. Rather, she was encouraged to see the tenacity in how they survived, in how they protected each other, even when their own guardians had failed them or fallen. 

Such was the case for four women who found their way to Jackson one brisk evening. They were young, younger than Maria had been on Outbreak Day, but clearly seasoned and fierce. They were rankled and itching for a community, an observation made all the more salient after Maria learned that their QZ had fallen from the inside. 

She was brought fully abreast of their intentions one afternoon when Abigail, the leader of the bunch, strode into Maria’s office and requested a complete overhaul of their patrol protocol. Maria regarded her quietly for a second, taking in the military fatigues Abigail had donned, her dark hair pulled away from her young face - and then motioned the girl over. The seeds of Jackson’s current patrol system were planted that day.

Maria knew she couldn’t spare these people the horrors they had witnessed, but she could bandage their wounds, give them food and shelter, and fold them into a community that would lift them up. They would find their feet, and they would take the community with them. She had seen enough in these times to know that when disaster struck, people found in themselves an incredible capacity to care for each other.

Whether or not that was their original intention. 

Such was the case with one of the strangest families to come to Jackson - strange in the sense that it functioned as sporadically as a live wire, but pushed onward almost in spite of itself. 

When Maria first saw Joel come through her gates, she struggled to resolve the gruff, hardened man in front of her with the carefree happiness in Tommy’s photograph. Here was someone who had been so consumed by the beast of the post-Outbreak that he hardly resembled who he had been before. 

And then there was Ellie, a blazing spitfire, a child who was bursting at the seams with...something. When Maria discovered that Ellie had stolen one of their horses and run away, she wanted to pass it off as youthful insolence: a spurious flash of temper that came with being a young person in this cruel, unstable world.

The odd pair left Jackson, and Maria had tried to put it out of her mind. But then they came back, cutting such a strange figure as they approached the gates: Joel, guns holstered, face open in relief as he waved the guards down; and Ellie, hanging back, tugging on her fingers as she studied her shoes. They were a far, far cry from the pair who had come through her compound seasons earlier, standoffish with each other in one moment and drawn together like magnets in the next.

Joel clearly loved Ellie profoundly, thought of her before anyone else, protected her better than the father he was not. 

And for a short time, Ellie seemed to flourish under this care. Some of the distance between herself and Joel seemed to wear away in that first year, as the two of them did their best to put down roots after being transitory for so long. Joel would have Maria and Tommy over for dinner, and Ellie would rib into his cooking, asking if everyone in the pre-Outbreak enjoyed such dry steaks. Joel would counter with a jab at Ellie’s own half-hearted culinary attempts - apparently she regularly mixed up the sugar and salt - and Maria would smile and wonder if she had gained a niece.

But Ellie drifted away from Joel like a dying satellite, pulled by other gravities. Maria, for her part, wasn’t sure if this could be passed off as burgeoning teenage independence. Ellie’s casual ribbing faded into a gray silence, and she joined them for dinner with less and less frequency. Joel gave up nothing when Maria made her observations known to him - but Maria had seen the same creased brow and frown on his brother enough times to know that Joel was deeply troubled.

Something had broken between them, and then healed over with careful optimism. But now it was a strained, fragile thing, that would inevitably give.

Maria had an entire community to protect and lead, and chided herself for watching them so closely. But another part of her knew that this was what she had signed up for - Joel and Ellie were her family now, as enigmatic as they were. Whether or not they flourished in this place was her responsibility. 

She would be lying to herself if she never acknowledged that Joel’s sudden and violent death made her question the entire purpose of this place. If she couldn’t protect her own family, was she no better than what waited outside of Jackson’s walls? Was her pre-Outbreak purpose just a fantasy that was doomed to collapse under the cruel gravity of this new world?

Maria shook herself. Jackson needed her. Dina and her child needed her. If she had to, she would put herself between her community and the twisted horrors beyond the gates. She would not fail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We didn't get to spend two whole games with Maria, so I felt it necessary to flesh out her backstory a bit.
> 
> References abound:
> 
> \- Marianne and Héloïse are references to the characters of the same name from the stunning romantic drama [Portrait of a Lady on Fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_a_Lady_on_Fire). More soft landings for fictional lesbians, please.
> 
> \- The character of Caleb is a reference to [Caleb Widogast](https://criticalrole.fandom.com/wiki/Caleb_Widogast) from Campaign 2 of [Critical Role](https://critrole.com/). As a wizard, many of Caleb's spells and cantrips are fire-based, hence the flamethrower in this universe. Similarly, I felt that a physicist could be a fun "real-world" translation of a wizard. I love this character and wanted to give him a soft place to land in this world - in canon, Caleb has a traumatic past and possesses a deep self-loathing. His cat, both in canon and in this universe, is named [Frumpkin](https://criticalrole.fandom.com/wiki/Frumpkin).
> 
> \- Abigail and the other three young women who come to Jackson are a reference to the four main characters in the very queer, very witchy [Motherland: Fort Salem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motherland:_Fort_Salem): Abigail Bellweather, Tally Craven, Raelle Collar, and Scylla Ramshorn. They are fiery, fearsome, and brilliant, and I feel that they would definitely survive this world.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back, friends. I fought with this chapter for a good while, and I’m still not totally happy with it, but here we are anyways. As usual, immense thanks to my readers for the kudos, comments, and bookmarks. I love sharing this story with y’all, and I can’t wait to continue.

For months after it happened, Talia slept in their mother’s room each night. The more comfortable pullout mattress was left to Dina, but it felt cold and bare and empty, and she would toss and turn in the darkness and wonder how Talia did it - how she could be so close to the absence of something she loved so deeply.

Dina went through the motions of her days as if in a haze. She accidentally overfed the remaining chickens and rushed to scrape up the extra seed before they gorged themselves. She almost put an awl through her palm when her hand slipped against the leather that she was trying to tan. Her mind wandered during worship, more so than usual - the congregation would stand to sing a hymn and Talia would have to gently tug her to her feet.

Everything felt disjointed, slipping out of reach, like she was trying to shove a puzzle piece where it didn’t quite fit. Each night, she wrapped her mother’s shawl around herself and inhaled. Each night, she dried her tear-stained cheeks as familiar scents - chamomile, bergamot - drifted further and further away.

Talia, on the other hand, was lit from within. She attacked each day with freneticism, with an energy Dina had never seen in her before. She collapsed each night, her hair tangled, her eyes strained. Dina would shake her shoulder gently and try to get her to eat something before she drifted back into unconsciousness.

“Tal, come on, you need to eat.” A spoonful of soup, half of a sandwich. Then, as Talia drifted off, Dina would gently untangle her hair and brush it until it was shining, even in the low light. After several years of doing the same thing for their mother, Dina had gotten quite good at it.

In the wake of the raiders, Santa Fe limped on. Dina gathered bullet casings and shrapnel, to be melted down. At dawn, she ventured out with her rifle, walking quickly to keep up with Anya’s long, quiet strides. She let the older woman lead the hunt, keeping her eyes peeled, safety off. They brought home three rabbits, to be skinned and quartered in the main square and added to the communal breakfast.

Before, Anya would have intimidated Dina in that strange, fluttery way that Dina couldn’t quite define. Anya was tall, and purposeful, and exacting, and Dina urgently wanted to occupy that same space in some way. 

But now, after the raiders, Dina’s heart only gave a tiny lurch before falling back into its continuous drum: _survive, survive, survive_.

It took almost a week of difficult work to properly inter all of the bodies, to the chagrin of some of the residents - the same, Dina later realized, who had boarded up their houses at the first sign of an attack, who had refused to pool their ammunition with the rest of the town. It made her lip curl, made her want to scream at them for their cowardice. 

But then Talia had rounded on them and they quailed at her clipped ferocity, and Dina had to suppress a smile behind her hand. This was no longer the shy, quiet girl who had found her way to this community years earlier, with her mother and baby sister in tow.

It was Dina who suggested that they have a party - okay, not a _party_ party, she clarified at the sight of Talia’s raised eyebrows. Something...something to help them remember the happiness.

“Momma wouldn’t want us to be sad forever,” Dina offered, and Talia’s incredulity faded into soft understanding.

So they dug out strings of lights from the cellar, and hung lanterns that Dina had tinkered into some manner of functionality, and threw a party. 

The evening was blanketed by a deep purple sky, the first stars twinkling in the east. Dina welcomed the cool breeze that was not yet its biting, wintery cousin - it chased away some of her mental fogginess that had set in so completely. She sipped on something that burned, considered spitting it out, and watched Santa Fe’s residents step tentatively into the well-lit town square and be swept up by a crooning violin and a sultry voice.

As she watched her sister and a blonde woman cut through the dance floor exuberantly, Dina felt a tug on her sleeve. 

She looked down and the blur of the party was replaced by the crisp, bright image of a small brunette girl who wouldn’t quite meet her eye. Dina recognized the scar across her forehead, the last remnant of a scrape that she herself had helped clean and sew up.

“Hi Dina,” came the soft, quavery voice.

“Hello Anna,” Dina replied warmly. Anna clasped her hands in front of her and studied her shoes.

“Um...I was wondering...if you’re still making those bracelets?” Anna’s voice lilted into a question, her eyes finally rising to meet Dina’s in a questioning but hopeful gaze.

Dina’s smile was immediate - she set her glass down and kneeled so that she and Anna were eye-level. 

“Of course, little bug,” Dina replied earnestly. “What would you-”

“I have supplies!” Anna interrupted in that bright, crashing way that young children did, as she held out a fist. Clamped in it were cords of leather, some beaded, some torn, some knotted and old.

Dina exaggerated her awe as she took what Anna offered, turning them over in her hands. “These are wonderful!” she exclaimed, putting on that joyous front that she knew was so rarely seen by a child in this world. “And what would you like to have?”

“Hmmm.” Anna scrunched her brows and rocked back and forth on her sneakers, although Dina was certain that she’d already settled on a charm long ago. Then her face lit up with bright conviction - “A butterfly!”

She shoved another fist into Dina’s palm and left something smooth and sticky with perspiration. Dina brought it to eye-level and studied the butterfly charm: sterling silver, hanging from a single eye hook, in need of a good polishing, but perfectly usable. 

“And where did you find this?” Dina asked, as she angled it to study it further in the light.

Anna scuffed the dirt with her shoe and dropped her gaze. Dina filled the silence herself. “Come find me tomorrow after worship, alright?” Anna nodded with vigor and scampered away.

Dina dusted off her jeans and stood, pocketing the charm and leather thongs. The music filled the square, sweeping the residents from their tentative swaying into the drug of exuberant dancing and laughter.

_Go down yonder, Gabriel, put your foot on the land and sea_

_Oh Gabriel, don’t you blow your trumpet until you hear from me_

Weeks earlier, Dina had trained her pistol on a scrawny, pale woman who had just yanked her knife out of the convulsing body of Santa Fe’s tanner, caught unawares. All her world fell quiet, except for the grating of Richard’s death rattle. The woman was easy to sight down Dina’s scope - she wrenched her head from side to side as the burgeoning conflict swarmed around her, and the desert sun glinted off of her silver earrings. 

Dina remembered feeling incredulous - _who wears earrings during a raid?_

Her head exploded in a cloud of red mist all the same.

Dina swallowed at the memory and thought of the pattern she would use tonight - a simple braid, with a little gap where the butterfly would hang. She had a few blue beads leftover that she could lace into the body, and she had enough time to make it adjustable, so that Anna could continue to wear it as she grew.

Maybe Anna would live long enough to pass it down to someone close to her. Or maybe it would be looted from her body and fashioned into someone else’s symbol of love and protection - remade over and over again.

Dina inhaled sharply and centered herself. If the cruel world coughed up a little something beautiful, she would gladly take it.

_I looked way over yonder, and what do you think I see?_

_I see a band of angels, and they’re coming after me_

* * *

Santa Fe prepared for the holidays with sluggish reluctance. Children stayed inside, and people shied away from each other and from newcomers. Dina watched Talia bite her lip and sigh, and tried to draw her attention by finding increasingly-dangerous ways to grate potatoes with their box grater.

Talia finally took it from her and shooed her away.

“You’ll be the death of me,” she called after Dina, a smile playing around her mouth. Dina just aimed a chunk of carrot at Talia’s head, ducking out of sight before her sister could retaliate. 

The first night of Hanukkah crept up on Dina as it always did - she blinked and there was snow dusting the ground, rags stuffed beneath doors to lock in the heat, and ever sparser game. Talia, creature of habit, knew when to alert her sister that a high holy day was approaching, and this year was no different. Still, Dina felt a warm satisfaction at the thought that her present for Talia had been finished weeks ago.

Their menorah glinted in the low light. Dina’s heart gave a twinge at the memory of their mother polishing the silver until it shone, and guiding Dina’s small hands as they clumsily filled the oil cups.

The _click_ of Talia’s lighter shook her from her reverie. She held the lit _shamash_ aloft, and it threw face into stark relief, painting it in flickering oranges and deep blacks.

Talia’s dulcet tones floated around them in the darkness, as she spoke the first blessing of the night. Dina let her head fall back, inhaled deeply, and watched the snow swirl against the windows of their little house.

It was strange to not hear their mother’s voice.

“So, not toe the line or anything,” Dina muttered as Talia finished the requisite verses. “But if our menorah attracts infected because we put it in the window, then I am definitely breaking out the shotgun.”

Talia chuckled, her hand steady as ever as she lit the furthest-right wick. “I’m sure the Maccabees would approve. But remember that the light is our sword, baby sister.”

“You just say that because you broke our machete.” 

“You can chop the firewood next time, how about that?”

The snow continued to fall steadily as they ate dinner, Talia picking at her food while Dina helped herself to another serving. Rabbit wasn’t brisket, but it was something, and she wouldn’t complain.

Dina watched Talia spear a carrot with venom. A somber Talia wasn’t necessarily surprising, but it was Hannukah, and that made a red flag go up in Dina’s head. 

Unwittingly, she thought of the year prior - being shaken awake by her mother in the early morning, so she could help slow-cook the veal; standing in the frigid kitchen wrapped in a blanket, dancing from bare foot to bare foot, hoping to snatch a donut from the cooling rack before anyone noticed; the taste of chocolate, a rarity, found by their Talia on a recent patrol.

“Here.”

Dina blinked. Talia was holding something close to her face, and Dina leaned back and scrunched her eyes closed for a moment, letting them refocus.

It was a cactus charm, cradled in Talia’s palm, glinting in low light.

“Where did you find this?” she asked as she studied the charm, turning it this way and that in the candlelight. It was burnished gold, not more than a few inches long.

“Oh, I had plenty of time, what with those hours-long hunting trips you’ve been taking,” Talia answered, some degree of mirth returning to her voice. “Speaking of which, you seem to be enjoying those _views_ , huh?”

By her emphasis and needling tone, Dina knew that Talia wasn’t talking about the expansive, mountainous landscapes that surrounded them. She rolled her eyes.

“If you must know, Anya takes down more game than anyone else out here. Who else would I pair up with?”

Talia didn’t drop her knowing smile, so Dina switched tactics. “What about you and that blonde girl? Annabelle? Ann-”

“Angela,” Talia corrected, quickly looking down at her food. “Not gonna work out.” She shrugged and speared a chunk of rabbit with her fork.

The conversation lulled and Dina bit her lip.

Now was as good a time as ever. She dug into her pants pocket and put as much brightness into her voice as she could. “I have something for you too, Tal.”

“Oh? You remembered?” Talia exclaimed in mock surprise, setting down her fork, and Dina restrained herself from rolling her eyes again. “Look at my baby sister, growing up!”

Dina scoffed, but shoved her hand forward over the table anyways, opening it to reveal Talia’s gift in her palm.

“Oh…” 

With reverence, Talia lifted the bracelet. It shone in the light: a blue and white bead set in the middle of a hamsa, flanked by two smaller blue beads, all woven onto thin cords of leather.

“You made this?” All evidence of mock surprise had left Talia’s voice, replaced by genuine, whispered awe.

“Yeah,” Dina replied. “To keep you safe. Keep _us_ safe,” she clarified with haste. “Since...since it’s just us now.” Dina glanced downwards and fiddled with her napkin. She swallowed against a lump in her throat.

A sad smile spread across Talia’s face as she slid the bracelet onto her wrist. “I love it.” She stood suddenly and reached for Dina across the small table, enfolding her in a tight hug. Dina buried her face in her sister’s shoulder and shivered, but not from the cold.

Later that night, as Dina hovered in a semi-wakefulness, she felt the mattress dip as someone slid under the covers next to her. When Talia’s breaths evened out into the rhythmic cadence of sleep, Dina rolled over carefully. The hamsa charm glinted from her sister’s wrist, identifiable even in the low light.

Dina sighed and closed her eyes, finally giving herself over to sleep. 

* * *

The bitter New Mexico winter faded, leaving days alight in warm sunshine, and nights that still dipped into colder temperatures. Wildflowers bloomed with hesitance and then great exuberance, and soon Dina’s hunting was rarely without bright patches of flora making their presence known again.

Dina gathered them, sometimes returning to the commune with more flowers than meat. At least twice a week, she would bind them together into bouquets and take them to her mother’s grave with Talia.

With spring came a natural resurgence in trade. Santa Fe was not too high on any trader’s list, but they still saw their fair share of ragtag groups and vagabonds making their way through to larger, sightlier places. 

Their caravans would wind out of the city and Talia would watch their progress from the window, running her fingers over her bracelet. There was a wistfulness about her - something that, if Dina was honest with herself, she had first noticed within the weeks after their mother’s death.

As Santa Fe thawed, its residents’ true reservations and feelings - frozen away during winter, in favor of that most base urge to survive - were revealed as well. There were more squabbles over resources, more disagreements that led into petty fights. 

Anyone who ever said that Talia’s faith made her soft didn’t know what they were talking about - but even so, Dina could see that her sister was wearing thin. She paced the creaky hallways from the gray, early mornings to the deep velvet night; Dina sometimes found her dozing at the kitchen table over a scattered pile of pens and diagrams and maps.

Talia knew that the community - if Dina could even call it that - was broken from within. It staggered along, but soon it would collapse under its own weight. 

Dina did her best to try to cling to the place they lived. Part of her knew it was futile, but another part of her had to try. That was how she found herself one evening, making collars for the feral cats that prowled around from time to time, weaving little beads and bells into them. Goony was always getting stuck in absurd places, roofs and gutters and the like, yowling until someone came to rescue him - he needed a veritable warning buzzer whenever he was in the vicinity, but perhaps a jingling collar would do just as well.

“We should go.”

Dina looked up. “What?”

Talia had turned off the sink and was staring at her hands, absolutely still.

“We should go. We can’t stay here.” Talia spoke with quiet confidence.

Dina frowned, and Talia pushed on.

“There’s so little food, you aren’t protected - I mean, _we_ …” Talia closed her eyes and dragged her fingers through her hair.

A flash of irritation made Dina want to shout her own replies: _You won’t eat anything anyways, I’m a better shot than you are_...but the words failed in her throat. 

Here was the first lesson of this world: if you found a roof over your head, you had to fight tooth and nail to keep it, even if it wasn’t perfect. And here they were, breaking it. 

But did they not have reason to?

Ever since their mother had died, Dina had thought about leaving Santa Fe, in that indulgent way with which she handled fantasies that she knew could never come true. She tossed and turned as she slept, replaying the images of her mother’s broken body in her mind over and over, slowly forgetting what she sounded like when she laughed, when she sang. 

To live in this place was to live in the most claustrophobic of quarters: simultaneously the site of her death, but also continuously exposed to the violence of the outside world. In such a confined space, there was no room for grief.

“And...and…” Dina could tell that Talia was trying to restrain herself as she crossed her arms and paced.

“We could have a community. Instead of people who hide when danger comes knocking…”

“They were scared,” Dina retorted, although empathy arced through her at the realization that Talia, too, recognized the disappointing cowardice of some of their neighbors. She trailed off weakly.

Dina knew that Talia was right. Santa Fe had raised her, but now it was wearing thin, a blood-soaked rag that could no longer clean no matter how hard she scrubbed. She wanted to move on.

“Imagine what we could have,” Talia said. “Why should we have to rot here and wait for death to come to us?”

Dina swallowed. She thought of Anna. She and her parents had left the commune months ago, when it became clear that a small child could not flourish in this place anymore.

“Don’t you see, Dina?” Talia continued, her voice pitching upward. Her eyes held a brightness, almost a ferocity. “We can _choose_ to do this.”

Dina pondered Talia’s words deep into the night. 

She wanted to leave. She wanted to stay.

She thought of the little charm she’d pulled from a ruined corpse, that now sat around the wrist of a little girl and gave her happiness. She thought of what her mother would always tell her, as she was drifting away to sleep - stories of a world before, of compassion and stability and kindness. She would drift into a soft, deep sleep in a deep calm, lured there by the absolute quiet conviction in her mother’s voice, the sweet, citrusy scent that always clung to her. 

“I won’t always be around to protect you from dangerous things,” her mother would whisper. “But there is a better world out there. There are good people out there, who will help you make the world into something beautiful.”

This was the first thought in Dina’s mind as she blinked tiredly in the low morning light. She shuffled out of bed and, to her surprise, found Talia awake, sitting at their kitchen table, nursing a cup of tea. Anxiety twisted in Dina’s gut.

Talia looked up, eyes meeting Dina’s. There was still a question there, framed by dark circles. Dina inhaled deeply and forced herself to stand up straight.

“Okay.”

* * *

Tiny purple flowers were sprouting around the grave marker, and Dina brushed them reverently with her fingertips. She hadn’t been certain that the seeds would take to this soil, but these were hardy little things, and Dina took comfort in the knowledge that their mother would have flowers even when they were gone.

“Hi, Momma,” Dina murmured, kneeling down and placing a bouquet gently at the base of the marker. “We’re leaving today. I’m going to miss you so, so much.” Her voice broke, wetness dripping from her cheeks onto the earth below.

“She would be proud of us,” Talia said as Dina stood up next to her. Talia’s hand found her sister’s and squeezed. “She would want us to go somewhere where we could be happy.”

Dina took a deep breath and held onto Talia’s words with all her strength.

They lingered at the edge of town, and Dina whistled high and loud for Goony and Ghost. There was nothing. She whispered a small prayer for them, shouldered her pack, and turned on her heel to follow Talia.

And so they struck out into the world. 

“I think we should avoid QZ’s,” Talia said as she distributed rations a few hours later. Dina eased her pack down onto a low shelf of rock and rolled her shoulders a few times. “Fewer strangers, less chance of getting shot.”

“Sounds good to me,” Dina muttered noncommittally. “So, not to be a downer, but... _where_ are we going?”

Talia pawed through her pack. “Last caravan that came through Santa Fe - oof-” Talia dug further and finally wrenched her arm free, clutching one of many maps in her fist. She squatted next to the rock shelf and flattened the map across it.

“They said something about Jackson, up in Wyoming.” Talia traced a red line she had drawn across the map - Dina saw notes written out to herself, scribbled out and rewritten, or segments of the path that were crossed off in favor of something more circuitous. “Sounds like a decently big community.”

“North,” Dina muttered, staring at the map over Talia’s shoulder. “Good thing we left when we did.”

“Yeah, considering you can’t resole your snow boots to save your life,” Talia prodded, as she carefully folded the map and tucked it back into her pack. Dina chuckled and just rolled her eyes.

They moved on, and Dina watched with something approaching awe as the world around her shifted. The outskirts of the state were flat and monotonous, an endless loop of slot machines, slaughterhouses, and outlet malls.

But spring unfolded before them as they made their way north. The terrain became rockier and steeper, sheets of sandstone giving way to rolling hills that, in turn, gave way to jagged ridges and peaks that jutted from the earth. Dina was more than thankful for Talia’s superior ability to track - and, in turn, to not be tracked herself. They felled game, avoided congested roads, and circumnavigated paths used by hordes with surprising and relieving ease.

As they encountered obstacles both expected and surprising - destroyed infrastructure, herds of wildlife, suspicious camps large and small - Talia reworked and revised their route with alacrity. She had a certain spontaneity about her that Dina had rarely witnessed before. And in herself she felt a new buoyancy, unexpected in the wake of their mother’s death and their abandoning of a home. 

In truth, despite it all, Dina let herself feel the tentative reach of hope. She counted shooting stars beneath a thick, velvety sky, and woke early enough to watch the sunrise bleed over the jagged ridges of the surrounding mountain ranges. The absence of their home pressed around them, but with it came clarity: across that jagged vacance, for the first time in her life, Dina could see for miles and miles.

Colorado sprawled before them, a sleeping giant - stunning, but not to be underestimated. With their steepest climbs still ahead, Talia suggested they leave their main route for a few days and rest. And so they zagged at a highway marker with an 82 on it, and found themselves approaching the shores of a vast glassy lake. They circumnavigated what appeared to be long-abandoned campsites and settled behind a rock shelf near the shore, out of view of the main road.

Dina watched Talia unpack her sleeping roll and tarp with surefooted efficiency.

“What are you looking forward to most?”

Talia glanced up from her work. “Huh?”

Dina leaned back against the rock shelf and waved her hand noncommittally. “I mean, when we get to...wherever we’re going. Jackson, or wherever.”

Talia lapsed into silence, and didn’t answer Dina until her sleeping bag was set up and she had settled herself near the shore. Dina watched her pick up stones, turn them over with care as if inspecting them, and then place them back on the ground, discarded for whatever reason.

“I want to go sledding.”

Dina chuckled. “I didn’t know that New Mexico didn’t have any hills.”

“Oh, shut it,” Talia snapped playfully. “I was too busy protecting your reckless ass to find the time.”

“Fair point,” Dina conceded. 

“How about you?”

Talia lobbed her stone into the lake, and Dina watched the reflections of the mountains ripple and distort, bleed into the bright blue sky, and slowly form back together. 

“I want to find an embroidery hoop.”

Talia chuckled with surprise. “Will they even have that in Jackson?”

“They’d better!” Dina retaliated. “I want to branch out from bracelets. And as my first project, I’ll do an embroidery of your stupid face.”

Talia eased back onto her elbows. “Just as long as it says ‘World’s Best Big Sister’.”

Springtime in Colorado was a mercurial affair. As they climbed in elevation, they encountered one-off snowstorms, frigid areas that the springtime melt had not yet touched, and lush valleys brimming with new growth. The sudden changes in weather and elevation made them liable to stock up on whatever natural resources they could gather in addition to their usual rations. Dina had never tasted sweeter strawberries. 

Even after spending years in Jackson, the novelty of enjoying one during a winter storm had yet to wear off. Beneath the vaulted cathedral of the sky, she had tasted another land’s summer song, and imagined tilling the soil of her new home to grow the same precious treasures.

That, at least, was one thing she had gained since leaving the farmhouse. 

And so here she was, mid-greenhouse rotation, enjoying her spoils instead of working. 

Dina studied the strawberry for a moment, freshly pulled from the planter in front of her and washed. She popped it into her mouth, closed her eyes, and let the sharp sweetness wash over her.

Jackson’s greenhouses were her candy store, her window into another time that was now so distant. For Dina, the luxury of having seasonal vegetables and some fruits year-round still held novelty.

Dina stood and hefted her basket, wiping at the sweat that collected on the back of her neck, no doubt smearing her skin with even more dirt. She didn’t care. She loved greenhouse rotation, loved the lush, damp scents of fertile soil and new growth. She loved being elbow-deep in dirt, tending to something young and new and in need of nurturing.

She loved the condensation that would build on the interior of the greenhouses’ walls. It transformed Jackson’s residents into fuzzy, distorted figures, muffled and belonging to another world. Time was frozen here, forever in stasis, in that place where life could grow year-round. In such a place, she could be anywhere: back on the trail with Talia, breeze in her hair, trading jabs; or back at the farmhouse, hands in the fertile soil, marveling at things that were coaxed into growth where it shouldn’t be possible.

“Hey, baby.”

She had loved being interrupted by Ellie, freshly returned from her hunt, smelling of sweat and earth and iron.

Dina would chide, pretending that whatever she was doing - spreading fertilizer, deadheading, weeding - couldn’t possibly wait. But there was no heart in it, and she would lean back into her lover’s embrace anyways. 

“How’s my little Potato?” Ellie nuzzled her hair as her hands wandered over Dina’s rounded belly.

“Kicking up a storm,” Dina murmured, one dirt-stained hand dropping to join Ellie’s. “A regular nuisance. I wonder who he gets that from.”

She felt Ellie grin against her neck and press a kiss there.

“A regular nuisance, hmm?” Ellie stepped away and stood, and Dina turned away from her plot, questioning. “Well, would a regular nuisance do... _this?_ ”

With aplomb and a flourish, Ellie produced a fistful of wild flowers, and Dina giggled as she stood and settled her basket on her hip.

“Yes,” Dina replied with even confidence, stepping close to take the bouquet and leaning up on her toes to peck Ellie’s lips. “But I love all my nuisances.”

Ellie took the basket, leaving Dina to study the flowers in her hands as they made their way back to the farmhouse. Scarlet, bright yellow and deep purple blooms filled her vision - she inhaled deeply, letting the soft scents drift around her. There was a dried bouquet set in the mason jar in the center of their dining room table; she removed it and added the fresh one in its place. 

A dull ache radiated through Dina’s feet and she groaned, easing down onto one of the dining room chairs. “I better not go up a shoe size after all this,” she muttered. Ellie emerged from the kitchen and was on her immediately - untying her shoelaces, easing off her boots and socks, pulling her right foot into her lap.

She hissed as Ellie pressed her thumb into the sole of her foot, tightness rushing up her calf. But Ellie persisted over a stubborn knot and Dina soon relaxed, propping her head up on her hand and letting the chair fully support her weight. 

“S’ nice,” she murmured, lulled into tiredness by the rhythmic work of Ellie’s hands. “Long day.”

“I know, babe.” Ellie pulled Dina’s left foot into her lap and continued her ministrations. “You should rest. Let me make dinner.”

“As long as it isn’t ‘rabbit surprise’ again,” Dina murmured, lips curving up into a crooked grin.

“Hey, organ meat is still meat!” Ellie fired back. She gave Dina’s foot a final squeeze before standing and turning back towards the kitchen.

The progress of Dina’s pregnancy had seemed to ignite something within Ellie, something that had been snuffed out months ago in a bloodied chateau. There were more easy smiles, more spontaneous dancing from their living room to their kitchen. 

Dina still awoke to the other side of the bed cold, and would find Ellie painting in her studio, or weeding the garden. Ellie would still greet her with a soft smile, and Dina would thread her fingers through hers and lead her back to bed. There were still leftovers piled on Ellie’s plate, but maybe a fraction less.

With the same slow eagerness that had filled her when she left New Mexico, Dina let herself believe that this could be her life now. Uncertainties still crested within her, begging to see the light, but she stood between them and her lover - she would protect Ellie from herself.

And maybe Ellie understood all the same - or at least that was what Dina hoped. This hope would strum in her as she lay back onto their bed, soft and quivering as Ellie ran her hands over her reverently. Finally, Dina could let go, crying aloud as fingers slipped inside her, and Ellie would whisper into her sweat-damp hair, “I’m here, baby, I’m here.”

Ellie had been trying - that much was clear. 

In the soft haze of their afterglow, that space between passion and deep slumber, Dina would pry a little more than she usually dared. She never intended to steer their pillow talk away from lightness and love, but very, very occasionally, Ellie would take the wheel and lead them into dark waters. 

Dina knew only pieces of Ellie’s trip across the country with Joel. From Eugene, she knew fragments of what Tommy had fallen into post-Outbreak. It was almost otherworldly to watch him tinker over electronics and then drop statements from his mouth that would send her reeling. Living through something like that, she imagined, was something else entirely.

And recounting it, she was certain, was its own type of hell. Ellie lay in Dina’s arms, but her gaze was distant in memory, and Dina threw a leg over Ellie’s hip to draw her close.

“And then he was just...on top of me. He was choking me and punching me and I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t see, but I got the machete back and got on top of him and then…”

She trailed off, eyes far away, seeming surprised at herself at having gotten this far. Dina rubbed her bare legs against Ellie’s and traced patterns on her back, trying to draw her back to reality.

Ellie inhaled sharply. “I’m sorry...I didn’t mean to bring this up-”

Dina shushed her and tucked a sweaty lock of auburn hair behind Ellie’s ear. “It’s okay, El,” she whispered with as much earnestness and compassion as she could muster. “It’s okay to talk about it.”

But Ellie’s creased brow and minute frown told Dina what she didn’t want to admit: that Ellie didn’t believe her.

Dina placed her basket on the pantry shelf and tried to ignore how the sweetness of the strawberry had turned bitter in her mouth. She waved to Robin, rubbed at a kink in her shoulder, and dropped her gardening gloves off at the check-out station.

Autumn painted the mountains around Jackson in yellows and oranges that dripped down the slopes. Dina was thankful for the crisp air, cool against her neck - it soothed the dull, throbbing headache that had been hovering around her for the last few hours. She made her way down the main drag, nodding at vendors who were starting to close up shop for the evening.

Her gaze fell on the walls of the Daycare Center, covered in nonsensical herds of wild animals. Dina smiled at the memory of her sister, wielding a paintbrush and proclaiming she could be “artistic too,” much to Dina’s skepticism. 

“The kiddos will love it, baby sister - you’ll see!”

Dina had hid her laughter behind her hand, but it was a small, brash child who had informed Talia that, no, elephants did not have circular ears.

Dina ran her hands along the exterior wall and wondered if her mother had had access to this kind of thing when she and Talia were small. And Talia had always led the youth groups at worship in Santa Fe - maybe she could have done something similar here.

Dina winced at the noise level of the daycare - they made thorough use of the building’s sound-proofing - and quickly made her way towards the cubbies to find Susan. JJ was in her arms, babbling excitedly.

“Here’s Momma,” Susan sighed as she handed JJ over. He immediately gripped the collar of Dina’s jacket in his fists, and Dina smiled warmly.

“I hope he wasn’t too fussy,” she said to Susan as she reached for JJ’s warmer clothing. She settled a beanie on top of JJ’s head, and watched as he made to pull it over his eyes.

Susan chuckled. “He was nothing of the sort,” she said as she held out JJ’s jacket, helping Dina slip his arms through the sleeves and button up the front.

“I’m still surprised that this fits him!” Susan remarked. “Jesse was born early, so we weren’t sure if we’d get good usage out of these after him.”

“Really?” Dina said, as she turned towards the exit. JJ tugged at her ears and Dina shushed him gently, wincing at the dull ache that throbbed in her head.

“He was a stubborn little cuss, right from the beginning,” Susan said, smiling as she followed. She played with a lock of JJ’s hair that poked out from under the beanie.

Dina chuckled warmly and stepped out into the cool evening air, thankful to be outside of the confining walls of the daycare. “Don’t I know it.”

“Well, I’m going to go find Robin.” Susan hefted on her own jacket. “I’ll see you back at home in a few hours. You two have a good evening, alright?”

“Yes ma’am,” Dina said with as much brightness as she could muster. “JJ, say goodbye to Grandmama, hmm?”

JJ babbled and giggled as Susan leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. 

Warmth bloomed in Dina’s chest as she watched Susan stride down the street. She wanted to do something nice for her and Robin. They were there for her without question, without hesitation.

The thought continued to thrum through her as she made her way to the butcher, ignoring the now steady ache in her head. 

“Miss Dina,” came a gravelly voice, and Dina smiled warmly at the sight of the bearded, bespectacled Jim. “And JJ! Look at you, you fine young man. You caught me just in time. Your usual, I presume?”

“Please,” Dina replied, bouncing JJ on her hip as she dug through her pockets for her credits.

With the packaged roast tucked under one arm, Dina started making her way back down the road. She wished for a free hand so she should rub the ache from her temples - but she would be back at the house soon enough. She cut through a couple back alleys and shortcuts that would take her past the east gate, and shave some minutes off of her travel time. 

“Dina!”

There was Maria, weaving through the crowds, and Dina paused. Someone was tailing her, but Maria just waved him off with urgency. 

“There you are. Listen, do you have time to talk later? Maybe come by after dinner, once JJ’s down?”

“Oh, um…”

There was a surge of the bodies around them, strange for the lateness of the evening. Dina winced, nauseated, and tried to keep hold of her bearings. She pressed on.

“I’m actually making dinner for Robin and Susan tonight, and I’ve got an early morning, tomorrow, so maybe later?”

A yell from somewhere - the gate? - went up and the throngs of people around them were suddenly thicker, pressing ever closer. Dina sucked in a breath and made to turn around, but Maria’s hand was on her shoulder.

“Are you okay?” 

Dina grit her teeth and waved her off. “Of course, Maria.” 

It was all practically making her head split - she thought of her embroidery back home, waiting to be finished, and the late night she would now have, and the early rise she had tomorrow to get JJ ready, and-

“Maria!” Another urgent yell, demanding attention. Dina couldn’t help herself - as Maria turned to address one of her patrols, she squinted down towards the gate, through the blurred crowds, trying to focus on whatever had caught their attention. There had been no alarm from the watchtowers, so surely it was nothing to worry about -

The crowds thinned, stepping away, and whatever they were focused on moved into clearer view.

And Dina saw.

For a moment, she truly believed that she was hallucinating - that her nightmares had taken corporeal form and stepped outside of her head.

Not a hundred meters away, waving off approachers, was Ellie.

She staggered. She carried herself unevenly, like one side of her body had to be dragged behind her. Like she had half a mind to turn round and leave. She cradled her left arm close to her body. Her clothes were dirty and damp, stained in reds and red-browns, the same shades that washed over her face in streaks. 

Dina couldn’t breathe. 

Figures stepped into and out of her vision, calling to Maria in fuzzy, distorted voices. Maria called back, her hand still firm on Dina’s shoulder, and words like “clinic” and “guns” and “no” drifted around her. Dina felt herself losing touch, spinning out of control. The ache in her head crested to a roar.

Her breath came again, but it was high and fast and shallow. Her veins thrummed with adrenaline - to run? To or from? Maria’s face swam into her vision, lined with concern, and Dina opened her mouth to tell her that she wasn’t ready, she couldn’t do this, she would fail again. 

No sound came out.

The roast thumped to the ground. Dina swayed violently, and Maria’s voice rose to an urgent timbre. Hands were on her shoulders, trying to steady her, gently taking JJ from her arms. As he cried at the movement, Dina saw the blur of Ellie’s face look up. Green eyes met brown, and all Dina could hear was the pounding of her own heart.

A second later, Dina’s legs buckled. As always, Maria was there to catch her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last line of this chapter is a reference to paxbanana’s lovely fic [Valley of the Shadow of Death](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16056701/chapters/37487207) (specifically Chapter 4). I have returned to this fic again and again in the past year, and it's part of what inspired me to write this story in the first place. Give it a read if you feel so inclined.
> 
> The route that Dina and Talia take from Santa Fe to (what eventually becomes) Jackson swings very close to the part of Colorado where I used to live. On the daily, I would drive up and down Highway 82 to get between home and school.
> 
> The line "across that jagged vacance, for the first time in her life, Dina could see for miles and miles" is a reference to Bon Iver's [Holocene](https://genius.com/6296677). The line "The outskirts of the state were flat and monotonous, an endless loop of slot machines, slaughterhouses, and outlet malls" is a reference to Phoebe Bridgers's [I Know the End](https://genius.com/Phoebe-bridgers-i-know-the-end-lyrics).
> 
> Both of these songs have personal meaning to me, but also resonate with some of the themes I'm playing with here, I think.
> 
> Enjoy, and let me know what you think!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My muse really grabbed me for this chapter, so here we are with a speedier-than-usual update.
> 
> Also, a content warning on this chapter for non-graphic descriptions of labor and a little blood. As always, if folks would like additional things to be tagged, let me know!

Ellie came back to her body slowly.

She felt weighed down by something dense and solid. Each breath seemed to let her sink deeper, and deeper, and deeper into whatever soft mass was beneath her. This was what she wanted - complete and total stasis. A stone in a river, unaffected by the currents around it. Ignored, and let go.

A door slammed.

“Wake up, sleepyhead.” 

And then she was back on earth. The term of endearment had done nothing to soften Maria’s stern tone.

Ellie groaned as she cracked her eyes open. She was curled awkwardly on her side, face pressed against the cushions of a couch. She extracted herself and found a sitting position, trying to smooth down the veritable rat’s nest that was her hair. _Beauty rest, my ass._

Her hand throbbed, and she remembered Doc Josie studying it, clicking her tongue at Ellie’s clumsy cauterization. She poked and prodded at the wound in Ellie’s side, feeling for lingering infection, and brusquely prescribed a course of antibiotics.

Ellie’s stomach clenched and she groaned. She’d taken her first dosage on an empty stomach, and now she was regretting it.

She heard a clang from the kitchen, and blinked blearily as Maria came into view. 

“Breakfast?” she asked simply. Ellie tried to wave her away. 

Maria stood firm.

“How do you like your eggs?”

It was less a question and more of an expectation.

“Uhh...over-easy,” Ellie replied, finally conceding. Maria strode into the kitchen and Ellie followed, stretching gingerly from her cramped position on the couch.

“I’ll be out of your hair soon.”

“Like hell you will,” Maria replied with force, cracking an egg energetically. 

Ellie sat down at the kitchen table gingerly. “There’s no place for me here, Maria,” she replied flatly.

“I don’t believe that for a second,” Maria said, whisking with vigor. “And I don’t think you do either.”

Damn.

“Dina-”

“-has her own life.” The sentiment hit Ellie with more force than she expected. She sat there, staring at the grain of the wood and not really seeing, as Maria cracked more eggs.

“Your first priority right now should be you,” Maria said, again with brusqueness. “Dina has folks who can take care of her. Pass me that salt, please?”

Dazed, Ellie complied, and hastened to respond.

“But I really messed up, Maria, I walked out on them, and -”

“And what do you expect she’s gonna do when you show up on her porch? ‘Oh, of course I accept your apology, just come back into my life like nothing’s wrong’?”

Ellie swallowed. “No,” she muttered. Her voice cracked.

“Look.” Maria softened as she set a plate of over easy eggs in front of Ellie. Their yolks jiggled, and Ellie suddenly felt nauseated. “I know you love Dina more than anything. And you two will need to work it out, especially regarding JJ. But…” Maria played with her scrambled eggs. “There will always be more time for that. She knows you’re here, and she’s probably dealing with a lot right now. It’s alright for you to give her the space she needs. She’s been through a lot.”

 _Because of me_.

Ellie fidgeted uncomfortably. “...okay.” Her voice was tight.

“And - and this is just from a practical perspective.” Maria held up her hands placatingly. “But if the only reason for you being here is Dina, and that doesn’t pan out for you, then you need to start thinking up a backup plan. I can’t have this community losing one hell of a leader.”

There it was. That mirror that Ellie didn’t want to look into.

“I’m of no use to anyone out here-”

“Really?” Maria replied through a mouthful of scrambled eggs. “You’re a good shot, you’re a good horsewoman, and you care. The community needs you. _You_ need you. Alright?”

Ellie swallowed against the well of nerves and anxiety that were bubbling up in her throat.

“But anyways, I’m not putting you back to work until you’re finished with those antibiotics,” Maria said firmly. Ellie had to repress the “Yes ma’am” that rose in her throat, a vestige of her military academy days.

“But once you’re back on your feet, I was thinking farm rotation.”

An old exasperation rose in Ellie. “ _Farm rotation?!_ ” 

“Yes,” said Maria. “Winter will be here before we all know it, and we need folks getting as much coverage for their harvest as possible. And you can use it to think over what you want to do next. But…” Maria leaned forward onto her elbows. “I hope you’ll take what I say to heart. I’m rooting for you here, kiddo.”

 _That makes one of us_.

The conversation lulled.

“...I’m sorry about Tommy,” Ellie said meekly, just to fill the space.

“He’ll find his feet,” Maria replied, but there was a tightness to her voice. Ellie swallowed, but didn’t press the issue. Not now.

And Dina...it embarrassed Ellie to admit that she hadn’t fully considered the possibility of her and Dina separating until now. There was some amorphous part of her that leaned on Dina as a beacon, as the lighthouse that would lead her back to Jackson. The idea that she may have to exist here, in Jackson, without that light...Ellie shied away from the thought with utter fear.

For all her complaining, farm rotation was its own godsend. The rote, repetitive work was like a buffer, a scab finally allowed to form over a wound that had been torn open again and again and again.

Ellie thought about asking why Maria didn’t make her move back into her own place. But Maria never raised it, so she let it go.

She still woke up in cold sweats on Maria’s couch. She still avoided the stables when the farrier was working, when the sound of clanging metal conjured horrifying images into her head. An old desperation grew in her as she realized - coming home wasn’t the panacea she had hoped for. She didn’t know how to make it all stop.

One bright morning, Maria asked Ellie to go to the pantry to grab some staples. So Ellie shrugged on her jacket, grabbed some of Maria’s credits, and tentatively made her way out into the community.

She still felt like she was swimming upstream. 

She had noticed it when she had first arrived, weak and haggard and dirty. Thank God the guard at the gate had recognized her, and she hadn’t had to draw a crowd or commotion. 

Once inside, she had moved sluggishly, quailing under the gazes of so many faces upturned to hers, so many wrinkled brows and cut-short questions. The press of bodies parted around her, but just barely, so slowly, as she pushed her way forward.

Her head throbbed. Her arm ached. Her side was ablaze. And here again was another pain - the pain of absence, the pain of abandonment, of returning to the place she knew she had wronged. She was a husk, blown here by a wayward breeze, and just as useful too.

When she heard JJ’s cries and watched Dina go down, Ellie had wanted to scream. She wanted to run, to gather the broken pieces of her family back together, to tell them how sorry she was. She resisted, hugging herself, knowing that it wasn’t her decision to make.

The cemetery loomed in her periphery. Not for the first time, she turned away, bile rising in her throat. 

_Not yet, not yet, not yet._

The pressing feeling of being a stranger returned with so much strength that Ellie felt like she was floating away from her own body. Why did she even come back? What had she done to deserve Maria’s kindness? What had she done to deserve any of this?

“Oh m- excuse me!”

Ellie balked and staggered. Vegetables went everywhere, rolling in the dust. A pumpkin collided with the ground and burst, sending pulp and seeds everywhere. And there on the ground, dazed, was Susan.

Ellie scrambled towards her. “Oh God, Susan, I am _so_ stupid-”

But Susan protested, righting herself on her own. “I’m fine, I’m fine. Grandson aside, I’m not _that_ old,” she said chuckling. Ellie blanched, trying to force the grimace on her face into a smile.

Instead, she set about collecting the scattered vegetables. The pumpkin was too far gone, but the winter squashes and tomatoes were still good, if a little dusty.

“I can replace that pumpkin,” she said urgently.

“Thank you, dear, but that’s alright,” Susan said, opening her cloth bag and helping Ellie place the vegetables. Then Ellie stood back, holding her left arm awkwardly. Behind a dam, her panic was barely contained, swirling and agitated.

“How...how are you?”

Susan smiled. “Doing well! Just got back from the greenhouses. The pumpkins are absolutely bursting this year, Robin will be so pleased.” She chuckled to herself. 

Ellie bit her lip. Susan was so casual, so...normal, it almost made Ellie sway.

“That’s...that’s good,” she replied simply. It felt like her brain had short-circuited. “Um...I gotta go do a favor for Maria, so...so it was nice running into you.” She made to step back and turn.

“Ellie.” Susan’s voice was soft, her eyes brimming with kindness. Ellie looked away, but Susan stepped closer.

Susan’s hand settled on her arm, firm and grounding through the miasma of Ellie’s suppressed panic. “Is this alright?” Ellie swallowed hard, nodded, and tried to remember how to breathe.

“Ellie, we’re so glad that you’re back,” Susan said softly. Ellie scrunched her eyes shut.

“I won’t speak for Dina,” Susan said, firmness leaching into her voice. “And she has the final say regarding JJ.” Ellie’s heart seized. “But…” Her fingertips brushed Ellie’s cheek and turned her head until their eyes met. 

“You’re still family.”

And in Susan’s eyes, she saw only open honesty. Ellie swallowed again and blinked rapidly.

“I want...I want to see him.” A truth, finally. Her voice crumbled and cracked.

Susan sighed, withdrawing her hand. “That depends on Dina. Nothing less.”

Ellie nodded and stared down at her shoes.

“Can I give you a hug?”

The question surprised Ellie. It cut deep, deep down to a soft, delicate part of her.

“Ye-...yeah,” Ellie mumbled out, voice scratchy. As Susan enveloped her in her arms, Ellie shook.

She had thought that she would want them all to yell at her, to scream at her, to display all her failings in tedious, gory details. And she had thought that in their goodness, their profound compassion and acceptance, that she would feel all the worse - would demand that hostility, ache for it, for tangible evidence of all her wrongness.

But this stopped her short, this explicit kindness. This continuous, gentle reception. Like she had been walking along, cautious and flighty and angry, and suddenly the rug had gone out from under her. All she could do now was hold on.

* * *

After years in a military academy in congested, mercurial Boston - where the facade of “order” was painted over deep, oozing abscesses of chaos - and months on the road with Joel - where there was no facade now, only the naked, open face of cruelty - Ellie hadn’t known what to expect from Jackson. 

She had long ago given up on groups of people finding community in each other, or taking refuge in anything other than killing and power and control.

For all the love of discipline and order espoused in Boston, there had been a strong undercurrent of hostility, and ultimately rebellion when it wasn’t squashed by outright intimidation. The consistent lack of transparency by FEDRA created a constant undercurrent of fear and disdain. Everyone knew that their walls were porous, their protocols were useless, and citizens were being infected all the time - they were just shuttled away, out of sight. 

So understandably, from day one, Ellie found it difficult to believe in the compound’s mission of peace, security, and camaraderie.

Even now, years later, Ellie wasn’t sure if she’d had “friends” in Boston - with the exception of Riley. And she’d only met Riley by chance, after being transferred to and from other academies countless times, detritus of the system that was just being pushed into a corner somewhere.

Ellie sat in the cafeteria and picked at her thin, moist rations, jostled by elbows and hip checks from some of the more confrontational kids. And then Riley had sat across from her, out of absolutely nowhere, glaring as if she dared the other kids to approach them. Ellie looked up uneasily.

Riley spoke first. “This is Tino,” she said, nodding at a lanky boy who set his tray down next to her. She nodded further down. “And Robert, and James.”

“Uh...hi?”

“Oh, and I’m Riley. Thought we’d come over here and sit with the cool kids. That alright?” Riley grinned.

Ellie didn’t say that she had been the only person sitting at this table until Riley had joined her.

“Sure…”

Despite her fresh transfer, Ellie knew she was already in hot water in this place. She was fiery, angry, spiteful. She hated who she was. She hated what Riley would see.

But Riley stuck around. And she stuck even closer when Ellie’s roommate was kicked out for breaking curfew one too many times, and Riley was assigned in her stead.

Ellie was hard-pressed to remember the good relationships she’d had in Boston. Other kids saw how often she got into trouble and steered clear, not wanting to implicate themselves. Her squad leader was a short-fuse personified - there was no room for the emotional baggage that came with “being a person.” There was only space for the requisite mechanics and responses that came with capturing and killing and carrying out orders.

But then there was Riley. Riley, who seemed to see past all that from day one.

The first time they snuck out together, Ellie practically vibrated with nerves.

“Where the _fuck_ are we going?” she hissed.

“There’s a cool comic store just down the street,” Riley whispered. “Come on, Freckles, you’ll love it.”

“You fucker,” Ellie muttered, but she followed anyway.

They circumnavigated patrols and scouts sweeping their fucking flashlights around every corner, and finally made there way into a dilapidated building, soggy from the rain. Ellie stood tentatively as Riley turned around, arms held wide. “Welcome to paradise, nerd.”

Ellie scoffed. “Nerd?”

“Yep,” Riley said simply as she started perusing one of the crumbling, damp shelves. “Takes one to know one.”

Ellie paged through one issue, damp but still readable.

“ _Enormous_ is one of my favorites,” came Riley’s voice. “You’d think I’d get tired of stories about folks in the post-apocalypse fighting monsters and stuff, but...you know...I like watching people survive.” 

Ellie chuckled. “You’re so weird.” 

“I’m aware,” Riley replied, poking her head out from behind a shelf and grinning. “It’s hard to find though - I’ve gone over this place a hundred times and nothing. But there’s a ton of stuff here. Take a look around.” 

And it was there, among the moldy, dusty comics, sitting between the dilapidated shelves, that Ellie felt the yoke of survival lift for just a few minutes. The words that tumbled out of her mouth were things that she had hardly shared with anyone in her compound, things she clutched close to her chest...but here, she laid it into the open, to be turned over and studied and picked apart. 

Her mother’s death. How the only parts of her that Ellie had left were a knife and a letter. The fog of horrible inevitability she felt when waking up every morning to face the compound. Riley nodded, pensive.

“I lost my brother a few months ago.” She sniffed, and Ellie touched Riley’s shoulder hesitantly. “He was protecting me from a Runner. I told him to run, but he…” She shook her head and sighed. “Cruel world, man. But at least we have each other.”

By the time they’d snuck back to their room, something alien thrummed in Ellie - a lightness that she had rarely felt before.

They still had to wake up the next morning to face down the machine that would one day fully devour them and spit out soldiers, but Riley was right - they had each other.

Riley seemed to understand Ellie better than Ellie understood herself. She was always going out of her way to shove Ellie through the miasma of her embarrassment and self-consciousness, and into a space where she could finally be herself. She had an uncanny knack of luring Ellie out of her darkest places, without resorting to brute force. 

Where other kids would pry - about where she’d been before Boston, about her mother - Riley seemed to know almost instinctively that forcing Ellie to talk wouldn’t work. She would have to get Ellie into a place where she could set down the walls she’d erected, lower her shields, and let it go. 

Before Riley, these places were few and far between in the Boston QZ. After Riley, they were all that Ellie could see, and everything that she treasured.

And then Ellie had fucked up.

She had been waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Riley to realize her mistake. When Riley started seeming more distant and conflicted, Ellie surged with anxiety. Her fragile support structure was falling apart, and fear told her to act now, act _now_ , or else Riley would be gone too.

And Ellie had pressed too hard.

Riley had told her to fuck off, and that was that. 

While Riley threw her meager belongings into a bag, Ellie stared out the window of their room, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. She didn’t turn around until she heard the door slam behind her.

Her world flattened from sporadic, glorious highs to dull, humming lows. She would sometimes watch Tino from one end of the cafeteria, and give a half-hearted wave. He had been depressed since Riley left, lackadaisical whenever they went into the field.

And Ellie, for her part, did nothing to suppress her - what had her squad leader called it? Her reckless, all-consuming insolence that would land her dead in a ditch one day. With her best friend gone, there didn’t seem to be much point anymore. It was back to the old Ellie, the one she couldn’t stand.

Still, Ellie clung to the memory of Riley. She would skim through the pun book that Riley had given her, even though she had already memorized most of them. She had thrown it onto the ground viciously after Riley stormed out of their room, but then cradled it tenderly, straightening out the bent and damp pages and drying them carefully.

The image of Riley’s smile and the sound of her laugh looped in her head over and over again, in that same idealized way that would become habitual for Ellie in the coming years, though she didn’t know it.

Because, despite her profound belief that she didn’t deserve it, Riley had come back.

When she had shown her the Firefly pendant, Ellie had wanted to be mad. She was jumpy, of course - there were no second chances in this QZ. Having a Firefly in her room was practically a death sentence. 

But another part of her felt a flash of...jealousy?

Here she was, being trained to kill Fireflies, and her best friend went and joined them. It felt like a strange betrayal at the time, but she couldn’t bring herself to be angry. Riley had found herself a community, and that made her rich in this world.

And yet, she had come back for Ellie. 

_I’m not even supposed to see you_. 

The Fireflies couldn’t have been all sunshine and daisies, but…why would Riley risk it all like this?

 _Guilt didn’t make me cross a city full of soldiers, Ellie._

_And yeah, I did some shit that I don’t know how to take back, but...I’m trying._

Both in that moment and years later, Ellie wished she could have had Riley’s strength. Her strength to admit, face to face, that she had messed up. That she was hurting, and she would still fight for the ones she loved.

_Don’t go._

That was all it took. Riley ripped the Firefly pendant from her neck and her face opened in pure, goddamn devotion. And for a couple of seconds, Ellie had seen a new future for herself, one with happiness instead of pain - one that extended years and years into the future instead of just holding on until tomorrow.

Ellie watched the streets of Jackson swell with people and adjusted the cloth bag hanging from her shoulder.

Here they were: people who would bury their hands in the dirt to grow food that they wouldn’t need for months; people who repurposed clothing from fast-growing children, because they expected more to come along soon in that perpetual current of life. 

Ellie had always felt like she’d been on borrowed time, desperately grasping for anything that she could hold on to in the here and now. Even if it meant abandoning her family in a fruitless, desperate quest to bury the pain that had consumed her, the pain that was the only thing she could see or taste anymore.

But Jackson was playing the long game: hard work now, for a payoff that wouldn’t come until years down the line. And Riley had been too. Giving, and sacrificing, so much for Ellie's happiness, even if it meant risking her own safety. That was why she had come back.

But Ellie had been out of step for years. Maybe that was it. Maybe she was doomed to play catch up for the rest of her life, to realize what she needed only after it had been left behind.

* * *

Ellie heeded Susan’s words, and did not seek Dina out in those early weeks back in Jackson.

She dreamed of Dina, of her laughter, her smile. The way her hair cascaded when she took it down. The way her brows wrinkled when she was rewiring something with utmost precision. The way she woke in the morning with so much softness and light, whispering a “Hi” to Ellie as if she was returning from somewhere far away. Oh, how she yearned.

But still, Ellie let her be.

She couldn’t stop herself from reflecting upon the fact that, usually, this would have been a challenge.

When Ellie had first seen Dina in Jackson, peering around from behind Joel’s tall, imposing form, she had almost been bowled over by the girl’s bright, imposing energy. Dina could easily be mistaken for overbearing, but Ellie now knew that Dina had been clearing a path for her, a path that Ellie could fill out and move through as she pleased.

Dina moved purposefully and easily through her friend group with confidence, as if they would immediately accept Ellie into their fold. And, for the most part, they did. 

In that first year, Ellie lost track of the number of times Dina tugged her over to the house she and her sister shared. Although she was initially intimidated by the fiery figure that was Talia, she came to appreciate her motherly presence and consistent, joking nature with Dina. Joel would chastise her for coming home late, and Ellie would just shrug and say that maybe, maybe, she had made a friend. That would make Joel soften, if just slightly.

Dina could flit in and out of different scenarios with an ease that surprised Ellie from the moment she saw her. At first it left Ellie exasperated, thinking that Dina just went where the wind blew her - until she realized that Dina was largely the one in control, wherever she went. The wind was just making suggestions. 

When one friend group fell apart, Dina was quick to assemble another one - even if it meant dragging Ellie along to go do something with someone new, much to Ellie’s chagrin. When someone bailed on patrol and Astrid was left partnerless, Dina waved her over to her own pair so they could be a threesome. When the patrol leader at the time retorted that there was no way they could cover two areas in one day, Dina fired back a “Try me.” Ellie watched the patrol leader concede with raised eyebrows and a warning that if anyone got hurt, it would be on Dina’s head.

Later, Dina confided in Ellie that they had gotten particularly lucky with a lack of infected in the Creek Trails that morning. But she still rode back to Jackson and reported her group’s coverage like a badge of honor.

After Ellie returned from Salt Lake for that second time, eyes puffy and red, practically storming through town, Dina immediately spirited her away to some hayloft. Ellie didn’t tell Dina what had happened, focusing singularly on the blunt they passed back and forth. But Dina seemed content to sit with her in that space, letting her feel what she wanted to feel. Ellie was afraid that her reticence would push Dina away, but if anything, Dina moved all the closer. 

The week after, Ellie found a comic on one of her patrols, and she and Dina had read it together, sprawled on Ellie’s bed until the early hours of the morning. And some of that crushing, suffocating shame and anger that had settled around Ellie seemed to lift a little.

Dina was always so firm in her convictions. If Ellie wasn’t happy, then by God, Dina would make it so. She was flexible, could bend whichever way the wind was pushing her, but at the end of the day, she always stood up straight and tall and unbowed. 

So in her second trimester, when Dina had settled on a water birth, Ellie knew this was another time when she’d spend more energy making it happen than pushing back. 

According to Dina, this was how she herself had been born, so Ellie wiped the surprised look off of her face and tried to understand her ambition.

“Won’t the baby, like, drown?” Ellie asked, brow furrowed, fully aware that there was some mechanic about birth she was ignorant to, and rapidly thinking back over all those books she had read.

“We’ll have the midwives there to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Dina replied, as if it was the easiest thing in the world. “They know what they’re doing, babe. Have a little faith.”

And that was how they found themselves back in a snowy, sleepy Jackson, in the days leading up to Dina’s due date. They took it easy, curled up together on Robin and Susan’s couch, watching the crackling fire. Ellie snagged some of Dina’s older embroidery yarn and started trying to teach herself Cat’s Cradle. Inevitably, she would shove her hands towards Dina and beg for help, and Dina would smile and free her fingers from the tangled thread. 

And then one night, Dina had trouble sleeping, meeting Ellie where she was regularly. And when the first contraction hit, Ellie coached her through it like she’d read in those old world birthing books. It soon became apparent that they showed no sign of slowing.

“Should I get Robin and Susan?”

Dina shook her head. “It’s still early. Let them rest.”

Ellie ran a thumb over Dina’s knuckles. “Should we go for a walk?” Earlier, when she had been wracked by what ended up being false labor, walking had seemed to help Dina with the pain. 

The assumption that they were going to the birthing center, conveniently a few houses down, went unstated. Dina took a shaky breath.

“Good idea...anyways, I’ll never forgive myself if my water breaks all over their new sheets. I don’t know what Robin traded to get these.”

“First and last time we’ll sleep on thousand thread-count sheets?” Ellie held up Dina’s jacket so she could slip it on. “Worth it.” Dina took a deep breath as Ellie scribbled out a note.

Some time later, Dina timed her contractions as she walked around their birthing room. All attempts at sleep forgotten, Ellie stayed up with her, getting her water and holding her hands and rocking with her through the pain.

“Ahh, _fuck_.” Dina moaned, voice pitching from low to quavery and rising in volume. 

She breathed through her clenched teeth as the contraction washed over her, and Ellie’s gut twisted at the sound of her pain - too raw, too close to when she had cradled her barely-conscious, bleeding body in a theatre and eased an arrow from her shoulder -

Someone touched Ellie’s cheek, and she was shaken back to the present.

“Hey,” Dina murmured. “Everything okay?”

Had the contraction passed already? _Fuck_.

“I need you with me, okay?” There was a pleading edge to Dina’s voice now.

“I’m here,” Ellie whispered urgently, trying to press back at the anxiety that was rising in her throat, as she took Dina’s hand in her own. “I promise.” She cast about for something to ground herself, for something to ground them both.

“Hey, babe.” 

Dina looked up. 

“I’m reading a book on antigravity.”

Dina blinked.

“It’s impossible to put down.”

Ellie swore that if Dina’s eyebrows could have flown off of her forehead, they would have.

It was absolutely absurd, and maybe that was why it worked so well, why Dina took a deep breath and her shoulders seemed to relax by a few millimeters.

“Our son’s first words are going to be puns, aren’t they,” Dina replied in a resigned tone, smile playing around her mouth.

“Nothing would make me more proud,” Ellie said, grinning.

And so they continued in that way.

“Okay, okay, okay...how do you make holy water?”

“You boil the _motherfucking hell_ out of it.”

“The woodshop keeps calling me back! But all I wanted was...uh…”

“A one-night stand.”

“Yes! You’re brilliant, babe. Okay, okay...”

By the time Dina’s contractions were down to a handful of minutes apart, the watery light of the early winter sun was creeping through their curtains. Jesse’s parents arrived, cheeks reddened by the blustery morning.

It made Ellie uneasy, being back in Jackson, with the unstated assumption that they would move back once they had a baby to take care of. But, to her relief, Jesse’s parents had seemed to drop the questions, at least for now.

She and Dina were here only out of necessity anyways. Initially, Dina had tried to push for a home birth in the farmhouse. But it was too risky if something went wrong, and they were stuck out in the country - too far from medical infrastructure, shaky though it was.

“That happened during a birth I assisted once, pre-Outbreak,” said one of the midwives as she tied her hair back. “Mom started laboring at home, but never dilated fully, and her husband had to drive her to the nearest hospital an hour away. Kept complaining about his leather seats while I was back there with his wife, talking her through contractions.”

“Sounds like a dick,” Ellie replied from the bed as she rubbed circles against Dina’s back.

“Yeah, I told him to shove it where the sun don’t shine,” the midwife said, shrugging. There was a smile evident under her surgical mask as she consulted a chart. “Alright, momma, how are we doing?”

For Ellie, things rapidly descended into a blur.

At least one hand was always on Dina, like a magnet, grounding them both: brushing wayward strands of hair out of her face, letting her hand clench and grasp around her own, resting a cool cloth on the back of her neck whenever things calmed down.

The midwives drifted in and out of her vision, speaking to Dina, consulting monitors, always fuzzy and muted.

Ellie couldn’t remember when she ended up behind Dina in the birthing tub, bracketing Dina’s hips with her legs and holding her hands and whispering in her ear. For once, she felt like a rock instead of the boat tied to it, as Dina breathed and swayed and labored through this storm. Ellie would hold her until it passed, no matter how long it took.

And then she saw the blood.

It clouded the water in soft pinks, floating down the length of the tub, long fingertips that caressed Dina’s bare legs.

And Ellie couldn’t breathe.

She couldn’t breath, and she was back in Seattle, wrenching her knife out of the neck of a pregnant woman and feeling her hot blood spurt over her fingers, and then she was on her knees in the water, watching a red cloud pool towards her from two bodies-

And from the bloodied water, from that image of death that consumed Ellie’s vision, Dina lifted him - wrinkled and red and squalling as he hit the air. 

And Ellie could breathe again.

Air entered her lungs in great, shuddering gulps and she realized that her face, like the rest of her, was wet. She was holding him, and she was holding Dina, and she didn’t know if it was minutes or hours passing by her.

Somehow they all shifted positions again. A towel was placed around Ellie, and something was murmured to her about a fresh change of clothes from Susan. Her child was lifted gently from her arms, to be weighed and cleaned and checked over. Ellie let him go, but felt a pull as she did so, a thin string that tugged when he was not near.

Still wrapped in her towel, Ellie hovered at Dina’s bedside while she was being assessed. She watched the corners of Dina’s mouth twitch down and her brow furrow, and leaned into her line of sight, blocking her view.

Ellie kissed her cheek, tasted salt, and moved to kiss the other one. The tip of Dina’s nose, her chin, every freckle that splattered across her face, until Dina smiled up at her, giggling weakly. Then Dina rested her forehead against Ellie’s, wove their fingers together, and breathed.

And then the midwives left to go check on another patient, and Dina slept, and Ellie held her son.

 _I have a son_.

She swayed back and forth to a rhythmless tune. She murmured little nonsense words, half-formed lyrics to new songs. He was so small, curled against her chest in the low light. The sky outside was a deep black, and Ellie looked at her own reflection in the window, as she cradled new life in her arms.

It felt completely at odds with everything she had done to get to this point. She looked away.

“Hey.”

When Ellie turned around, Dina’s eyes were as soft as her voice. Her hair was loose, damp and still drying. She propped herself up on her elbows, rubbed at her eyes blearily, and motioned them closer.

“How’re my two favorite people in the whole wide world?” she murmured, stroking the baby’s hair and resting one hand in the crook of Ellie’s elbow.

“Just learning some Ellie Williams originals,” Ellie replied, as she continued to rock back and forth. “Gotta start ‘em early, you know?”

There was a chirp and a yawn from Ellie’s arms, and Dina smiled warmly. “Did you like dancing with Mummy?” Ellie felt her heart swell as she turned to settle him gently back in the crib.

“Good night, Spud,” she whispered, pressing a kiss to his hair.

She straightened up and stretched. Dina watched her with a half-smile on her face. “Wanna hear something crazy?”

There was that playfulness again. Ellie sat on the edge of the mattress and ran a hand over Dina’s legs. “Do I?”

“I think those painkillers are making me a little high,” Dina whispered, smothering her own laugh with her hand as if she was a teenager keeping a secret.

Ellie snorted and squeezed her foot through the blankets. “Better than sex den weed?”

“ _Nothing_ will beat sex den weed,” she replied, giggling. She then sighed deeply and opened her arms, murmuring, “C’mere, love.”

Ellie toed off her sneakers and slid beneath the covers, letting Dina settle into the curve of her body. Her arms went around her gently.

“I think we did something pretty cool today,” Dina murmured, pressing a kiss to Ellie’s forehead.

“You mean _you_ did,” Ellie replied.

“Now, now, helping me into the tub was _very_ important,” Dina added, and Ellie chuckled.

“For the record,” she said, as she stroked the back of Dina’s neck, “This was, like, maybe the most badass thing I’ve ever seen.” Dina just smiled, tucking a lock of auburn hair behind her ear.

“I told you it would be fine,” Dina replied, and Ellie pressed a hand to her chest in mock outrage.

“You also told me you were going to eviscerate me with my own knife if I didn’t shut up.”

“Semantics,” Dina shot back, thumbing Ellie’s jaw. “I was in a lot of pain, in case you can’t remember.”

“My hand definitely remembers.” Ellie earned herself a slap on the shoulder for that. 

They drifted into a shapeless half-sleep, Ellie content to let Dina doze while she played with her lover’s damp hair.

She must have drifted off at some point, because the next thing Ellie knew, she was opening her eyes to the image of Dina, their son pressed to her naked breast, humming quietly in the grey dawn, looking absolutely angelic.

“Wow.”

“Hey, sleepyhead.”

She marveled, once again, at the tiny, fragile person in Dina’s arms. Her hand could easily cover the span of his back. He grasped for her finger and held on tight, and she scooted closer against Dina in the process. She rested in the soft curve of Dina’s neck and yawned.

“You went out like a light,” Dina murmured, pressing her cheek to the crown of Ellie’s head. “He started fussing and you slept right through it.”

Guilt twisted in Ellie’s gut and she extracted herself. “I’m sorry, I should have taken him for you-”

“Hush,” Dina murmured, tracing Ellie’s jaw with the fingertips of her free hand. “You needed the rest. Now c’mere and help me come up with a name.”

Ellie complied, running through the list she’d added to and scratched names from in her head for months. It was an old exercise by now, and she rubbed at Dina’s belly absentmindedly, lost in thought.

“He looks so much like his father,” Dina said softly. Ellie sat back up and squinted.

“So we’re naming him Jesse 2: Electric Boogaloo, right?”

Dina gasped and swatted at her playfully.

“You’re so lucky I love you.”

They had traded names back and forth all through Dina’s pregnancy, tossing some away easily and circling back to others again and again. Ellie hadn’t expected it to be so difficult - she thought a name would just slot into place one day, perfect and solid. Now it felt sacred, to be able to name new life in this hostile world. She wondered how her own mother had settled on hers.

“Our little survivor, hmm? You went to hell and back just to get here, little Potato.”

“Yeah,” Ellie trailed off. Guilt twisted in her gut again, but she batted it away. “One tough kiddo, and one tough momma.” She buried her face against Dina’s bare neck.

“I must really smell like hot garbage now,” Dina said, chuckling. Ellie shook her head against Dina’s skin before pulling away.

“You look beautiful,” she said simply, tucking a few loose strands of hair behind her ear. Dina swallowed and her eyes were momentarily serious, pupils blown wide. Ellie couldn’t resist. “Can I kiss you?”

“I will never say no to that,” Dina replied, coy again as she lifted her chin. “Just watch out, I haven’t brushed my teeth since I started laboring.”

“I’ll take my chances,” Ellie murmured, framing Dina’s upturned face in her hands and leaning in to press a soft, chaste kiss to her lips.

Dina rested her forehead against Ellie’s before she could pull away.

“Listen...earlier, in the tub, did something…”

“I’m alright. It was nothing,” Ellie replied. She curled back around them. “This is the only thing that matters right now.”

She felt Dina hesitate, tensing beneath her. Then… “Okay.”

Ellie wrapped an arm around Dina’s shoulders, and Dina settled back against her, threading their fingers together over her stomach - and Ellie cradled her new family in her arms and let herself believe that this could be forever.

* * *

A week passed.

A week of farming rotation and tossing and turning on Maria’s couch. A week of refusing the offered guest bedroom, despite the cramps in her back and the crick in her neck.

A week of bolting awake in the weak light of dawn, breathing heavily and reaching for her knife to take down an enemy that wasn’t there.

And a week of a new, all-encompassing horror - watching Dina fall to the ground, bloodied and dying. Running to her to staunch her wounds and instead sliding her own knife between her ribs.

Ellie sat there in the gray, chilly dawn, shivering in her sweat-damp sleeping clothes, rubbing her arms for warmth that wouldn’t come.

The days themselves were hardly any better. She lapsed into long, cloudy silences, finding it easier than keeping up a facade of engagement and interest. She expected Maria to try plying her, but the woman just kept up a steady stream of food and water and encouragement to sleep. She halved Ellie’s farm rotation and put leatherwork onto her schedule instead. Ellie felt a spark of energy at the creativity this required - it was a step up from the rote, repetitive labor of farm rotation, and Ellie tried to lean into it as best she could.

But her hands shook, her stitches were uneven, and she gave up easily, at the first sign of what she always knew was true - that whatever she produced with her own hands was woefully inadequate.

Ellie knew Maria was watching her flounder, and guilt washed over her at the burden she knew she was placing on her new benefactor. This was only exacerbated by the absolute, complete shutdown she experienced when she tried to make plans to further engage with the community around her. Through her exhaustion, she let Maria position her where she should be, with little resistance or input.

She let Jackson wash over her, unacknowledged.

“You should go for a long ride,” Maria had suggested one morning over breakfast, when Ellie shrugged noncommittally in response to her usual _How are you?_

And so here she was, making her way towards the stables. Ellie didn’t think it was a coincidence for Maria to make this suggestion after the particularly sleepless, haggard night she’d had. She let herself be placed here and wondered if Maria, like all others before her, was finally at the end of her rope.

The autumn afternoon was crisp and cool, and leaves crunched underneath Ellie’s boots as she made her way. She could see Jackson’s residents slip in and out of her periphery, but none of them called to her or raised a hand in greeting.

 _Good_ , she thought simply. That would make this easier.

The cemetery loomed behind her once again. She put on speed.

Those old tendrils of anger curled in her, curling around the dried, dead roots sent down deep by her depression. There it was, that old ache, that old wound.

It had refused to close, even after she had wrenched her hands from around Abby’s neck, even after she watched her boat vanish into the fog. 

Her outward anger was redirected, turned inwards, now at the only two people who she was certain deserved it.

Herself, for her foolish, stupid, monstrous acts. For her shameful, fiery naïveté that had made her waltz into a well-armed, well-populated military compound - into the center of a regional conflict that was far bigger than her own pressing desire for revenge - and endanger the lives of those she loved. For her momentary belief that for once, her life could have a purpose.

And him.

Her chance to finally, finally mean something - all gone, because he saved her. And for what?

So she could abandon him in the one place they could call home, when they had finally found peace? So she could watch him die? So she could become a monster in someone else’s nightmare?

Ellie’s tiredness and exhaustion were a fast kindling, soon fully alight in the blaze of her fury at the injustice of it all. She was barely aware of her surroundings until the rhythm of hoofbeats drummed in her ear and she realized she was astride Tulip, galloping carelessly up through the field that overlooked Jackson.

She slowed, for the horse’s sake, and they both panted at the sudden exertion. Ellie gave herself no quarter and dismounted, stalking off to nowhere, the storm in her rising to a hurricane.

Bile and rage rose in her throat and she wanted to scream, to cry, to break open her own ribcage and reach inside of herself and pull out the rotten viscera, the proof that she was _worthless_ now, that she had _nothing_ left to give. That she did not _deserve_ to be saved.

Saved, so she could fall in love.

Saved, so she could watch her son be born.

Saved, so she could throw it all away.

 _We let you live, and you_ wasted _it!_

The fields around her undulated, shining gold in the setting sun, and Ellie sobbed. She raked her nails through her hair and clawed at her arms, breaths coming faster and higher. She pressed her nails into the bumpy, scarred flesh of the chemical burn and the bite beneath, and dug and dug and dug, as if she could rip out that part of her - that elevating, reverent shackle, that noose around her neck that would never let up. 

_I should have died with you, Riley_.

The thought was a bright, burning roar. 

She didn’t know when it faded to a dull throb in her head. In time, the world came back to her, in hazy shapes and then sounds. She was on her side, pressed against the dirt, breathing in the scent of earth and vegetation.

The sound of hooves met her ears, and Ellie scrambled into a sitting position, panic rising in her throat. Tulip, ever-loyal, had followed her on her tirade, but the hoofbeats belonged to someone else.

It was one of the patrols, returned from his route. Embarrassment coursed through Ellie - surely others would catch up soon. She couldn’t be found like this. She shaded her eyes and peered up at him, backlit in the setting sun. She didn’t recognize him, or the bay horse he sat on.

“Are you okay?” His voice drawled, edged with a twang.

 _Ask me another_ , Ellie thought bitterly. She coughed and cleared her throat.

“Yeah, no, I was out...patrolling for Maria…”

That clearly wasn’t true, given that he’d found her lying in the dirt, but to his credit, the man just nodded.

Tulip lipped at her shirt and her hair, and Ellie became uncomfortably aware of the fact that she was still sitting down. She stood on shaky legs.

“Sun’s goin’ down. You can head back with me.”

Ellie coughed again, nodded her assent, and mounted back up. They set off down the hill. 

The grass swayed around her gently in the setting sun. The man in front of her was a blur, softening in and out of coherence, even though he was only several meters off. What was his name again? Ellie felt afloat, untethered. She let Tulip carry her, hardly touching the reins or shifting her weight. 

She had arrived at a crossroads. She had been here before. The familiarity ached.

 _The way I see it, we have two options_.

They let the horses pick their way down the trail, the gate coming into view. The man waved up towards the gates. His voice sounded far away to Ellie.

_Option one: We take the easy way out._

She pictured her backpack, still fully packed, and the rifle she’d borrowed for the day. She didn’t have much ammo, but she could scavenge for more easily.

_It’s quick and painless._

She pictured the downturned faces of Jackson’s residents, looking away from her.

 _I’m not a fan of option one_.

Ellie handed Tulip off to one of the stablehands and started unbuckling the cinch. Habitually, she hefted the saddle off of the horse and brushed at any sweat stains until her mare was cool and dry. Tulip nickered, swung her head around, and nibbled at her pockets, searching for sugar. Ellie produced a cube and leaned against the mare, feeling her slow, deep breathing.

_Two. We fight._

Someone called to her in goodbye as she left the stables, but the sound of their voice was muffled. She didn’t know where the man had gone. She didn’t care.

_Fight for what?_

She let her feet carry her. Jackson parted around her like a sea, blazing in the setting sun. 

_There are a million ways we should’ve died before today._

She didn’t look up as she walked, but she heard them - laughter, joking. Setting down their burdens, making room for brighter, better things.

_And a million ways we could die tomorrow._

She wondered what Dina was doing. It was close to dinnertime. Was JJ eating solid foods by now? Was she plying him with steamed carrots and mashed peas, born aloft on tiny, pretend airplanes? 

_But we fight, for every second we get to spend with each other._

Her strides lengthened. Instead of fighting the current, she moved easily, letting herself be pulled along.

_Whether it’s two minutes, or two days._

Finally, her feet stopped and she looked up. In front of her, unsurprisingly, was Maria’s office. A brisk, autumn breeze picked at her sleeves, and Ellie realized that her face was wet.

_We don’t give that up._

Maria looked up when she entered, eyes widening behind her reading glasses. Urgency gave an edge to her voice. “Is everything alright? Did something happen?”

Ellie let the door close and approached the desk slowly, tugging at her remaining fingers.

Her voice cracked and pitched - from disuse or emotion, she couldn’t tell.

_I don’t want to give that up._

But she looked Maria in the eyes, and finally, she spoke.

“I need help.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ETA: Big thanks to QuietlySomethingAlso who reminded me that American Dreams is canonical, thus we actually know how Riley and Ellie first met. So consider the background discussed here...somewhat canon-divergent? 
> 
> I know I’ve been hitting the backstory hard these couple of chapters, and I promise that the story in the present will progress more very soon.
> 
> JJ’s birth and the recurring blood-in-water imagery are some of the first things I ever wrote for this story, and I’m glad to finally get them out into the open.
> 
>  _Enormous_ is a real comic book series, first published in 2012. It's been lauded for its nonchalant and unabashed portrayal of queer relationships. Also, there are giant monsters, and who doesn't love that?
> 
> This is, like, the barest whisper of a reference, but "Okay, okay, okay" is something that Ashley Johnson (voice of Ellie) says quite frequently on episodes of Critical Role.
> 
> Finally, important things in my life are picking up at a quick pace, so I’m not sure if I can continue to update on a strictly weekly cadence, but I will do my best!


	6. Chapter 6

Maria thought she knew loyalty - and then she watched a child defend their injured parent from a runner with nothing but a knife, before her own patrols could swoop in.

She thought she knew dedication - and then she watched the walls of Jackson go up in a confident, never-failing bid to reclaim some semblance of humanity.

She thought she knew love - and then she watched her husband walk halfway across the country, into a well-armed compound, and almost lose his life - all in the memory of his dead brother.

And perhaps worst of all, she thought she had known someone. She thought she had known who would come back from that descent into hell. She was wrong.

Maria’s life after Outbreak had been redefined in so many ways that it made her dizzy. So many emotional strongholds were shaken and reformed, taken to their extremes, or reframed entirely. The new values and priorities of this world surprised and sickened her. 

Early in her marriage, she had tried to accept the knowledge of the terrible things her husband had done, the things he and Eugene would discuss while patrolling around Jackson’s borders. They didn’t speak easily about it - there was reverence and restraint in their tone, hesitation before acknowledging something terrible - but still: they spoke, and so they had acted. And in some sense, they were already unreachable.

For all the implied domesticity that came with strengthening the compound that was Jackson, there remained an air of restlessness among them, something unfinished that rested under the surface: something that made Tommy thrash in bed, that made Eugene double and triple-check his weapons and ammo before a patrol. They had dug in themselves a new well of conviction, a source of energy from which they could draw in the face of desperate, horrible acts.

And so, Maria was not entirely surprised when she learned that Ellie had left the farmhouse.

She had seen firsthand how obligations could become distorted in this world. Tommy’s anger and grief over Joel’s brutal death were all too real and all too consuming. And the burden he took on - that transformation into a hand of God, existing to mete out righteous justice in the face of an uncaring universe - was a corruption with which Maria was all too familiar.

And yet, if she was being honest with herself, Maria was not completely surprised when Ellie came back. 

Ellie had been skittish early in her time in Jackson, but Maria knew that she craved human contact. She watched Ellie try, so hesitatingly, to carve out a place for herself, as significant people wandered into her life: Cat, Jesse, Dina, and others. And, oh, how her gaze lingered on Dina, how Ellie both lit up and relaxed around her, finally settling into the space she occupied. 

Maria didn’t realize until much later how similar it all appeared to her life immediately post-Outbreak: that continuous search for normalcy, that desperate quest for something to cling to. 

How strange it was, to see the ghosts of something once loved but almost ignored in normalcy, now coveted. Trinkets, bracelets, pictures, birthdays, weddings - the totality of the human experience before devastation, brought along in pieces or clumsily rebuilt. 

Of course, Maria hadn’t become proprietor of this place under the naive assumption that she could create a copy of the old world amidst the swirling, violent current of this new one. She knew instinctively that this would be a useless exercise, a fool’s errand.

But it still left a bitter taste in her mouth with the knowledge that some things could not be reclaimed. Some things were poisoned in this new world, corrupted and distorted until they no longer held even the core of their original form. 

Like her husband.

Maria knew of head injuries, of the kind of physical and emotional trauma that they wrecked on a person. Before Seattle, she knew of the damage that Tommy and Joel, and then Tommy and Eugene, had voluntarily wreaked. Would building this community be enough to balance that out? Maria hardly believed in karma, but some small part of her slept easier with this knowledge.

After Seattle, it made her sick to her stomach.

For months, it was still all Tommy could talk about: the time he had wasted. The years and years and years that had passed him by without speaking to Joel. The precious few moments they’d had back here in Jackson. The last things they had said to each other on that patrol. 

How Joel brought Ellie’s name up, something he hadn’t done voluntarily in ages. How a smile, a real, genuine smile spread across his face, and lit it up with so much life.

And then all of it was ripped away. Tommy had thrown their names out to this group of strangers, because he had believed in the light, and here was where it had taken him. 

There was no light. There was no coming back from that.

Maria turned this over in her head as she watched Dina being fussed at by Josie and one of her assistants. Dina had come to while still out in the street, and Maria was thankful for the extra bodies that dusted her off and helped her to the clinic. 

She had made sure that Ellie was directed to a private room, out of sight.

Josie’s assessments, as always, were quick but accurate. The ailments people suffered post-Outbreak, when they weren’t in active danger were predictable to an extent - brought on by stress, or lack of continuous care, from themselves or otherwise.

“You’re quite dehydrated. You getting enough sleep?” 

The dark circles around Dina’s eyes could have spoken for themselves, but her eyebrows rose in exasperation. “Would you get enough sleep if you had a baby?” she jabbed.

“I’m halving your rotations,” Maria said from the doorway. “It’s no help if you’re working yourself to the bone. No help to your son, either.”

Dina sighed and retreated. “I know.” 

The exam wrapped up briskly, with a stern warning from Doc. Dina’s eyes seemed far away during all of this, and she pulled her jacket back on with stiff movements.

“JJ’s with Robin and Susan,” Maria said. “I rescued your roast too. I’ll walk you back?” She tried not to cringe internally at the very, very normal things that fell from her mouth.

“Alright,” Dina replied. 

As they left the clinic, the autumn breeze snuck under Maria’s collar and she tried not to shiver, shoving her hands into her pockets. Dina seemed to walk with as much purpose as she could muster, for someone who had just fainted. She kept her gaze focused singularly ahead of her. The roast was tucked back under her arm. 

Maria cleared her throat. Dina didn’t look at her.

“I’m going to let you take the lead on this,” Maria said gently. “I want you to know that you have control here.” When Dina didn’t respond, Maria pressed on with a little more specificity, heart twisting as she did. 

“If you don’t want her coming by, I can make that happen.”

“Why are you doing this?” Dina asked sharply, still looking ahead. “You have a whole community to look out for.”

“Dina,” Maria said firmly, and Dina actually stopped and turned to look at her. 

“Look…” Maria had to restrain herself from rolling her eyes. “I know it sounds like a fucking cliche, but I’ve learned the hard way that when one of us suffers, we all suffer.” She sighed, and watched Dina’s eyes dart down to the ground, then back up again. “I can’t tell you what to do here, but...you’re allowed to let yourself grieve. You’re allowed to accept help.”

Dina crossed her arms, steeling herself. She took a breath as if she wanted to speak, stopped herself, and then tried again.

“Is she...is she getting help? At the clinic?” She pointedly avoided Maria’s gaze, but her voice quavered violently. Maria nodded.

Dina looked down at her shoes.

“I don’t...I…” 

Dina took a shuddering breath and pressed her shaking hands to her mouth, as if she was trying to staunch a flow of words before they could spill over.

“I can’t do this,” she said, voice raw and cracking and choked, and words suddenly spilled from her mouth. “Keep her away from me.”

Dina looked horrified after it left her mouth, like she did not believe where she was - like this was a path that she had imagined, the worst possible outcome, but one she never believed she would go down.

Maria could only nod. 

“Take all the time you need.” 

She knew from experience: there was nothing else she could say at this point.

* * *

The sun had almost completely set by the time Maria made her way back to her house with Ellie. The night air had a bite to it, and Maria continued to regret her poor choice of clothing as she crossed her arms and matched Ellie’s slower pace.

“When was the last time you ate?”

Ellie didn’t look up. “Maybe a day ago.”

“I have some leftovers that you’re welcome to.”

“Thanks.”

Maria had had to restrain her shock at the sight of some of Ellie’s injuries, those that she could see at least. Ellie slouched, keeping her arms crossed close over her stomach, as if she was waiting to defend herself against something.

The porch was dark when they returned, and Maria cursed at the windows she had left open during the day. She shut them a little more aggressively than she intended, and the glass vibrated, distorting the image of Jackson around her. 

Ellie left her pack by the doorway and took the offered sleeping clothes. “Shower’s on the second floor - it’ll need a minute to warm up.” 

Ellie seemed to freeze for a second, as if her brain couldn’t compute what any of that meant, but she shook herself and made her way up the stairs.

Maria knew she should pry, but it had been a long goddamn day for them all. A few hours of rest wouldn’t hurt anyone.

Ellie came back down sooner than Maria expected, as she was just deciding if week-old pot roast would be suitable for her guest. She mentally axed it and went for the shepherd’s pie instead.

There was something comforting in the repetitive exercise of scooping leftovers onto a plate and warming it up in the microwave in the middle of the night. The number of times she’d done it when she couldn’t sleep, when she was anxious about a test she had in the morning, or was upset after a fight with her mother...as mind-numbing as it was, there was something comforting in its domesticity. 

Maria watched Ellie pick at her food. With her hair wet and the slightly-too-large sleeping clothes practically hanging off of her, she struck a small, haggard image. 

The silence was loud in Maria’s ears. At the very least, she had to make sure that no one dangerous had been on Ellie’s tail.

“How long were you on the road?”

Ellie crushed another section of shepherd’s pie with her fork. “How long does it take to walk to Santa Barbara and back?” she replied simply, in an even tone. She didn’t look up.

Maria sat down across from her, deciding on a little more persistence.

“Just for security purposes...did anyone follow you?”

“I camped outside the wall for three days,” Ellie said to her plate. “Didn’t see anyone on my tail.”

Maria didn’t ask if Ellie had done so because she thought she was being followed, or because she had gotten cold feet.

“And none of my patrols found you?”

Ellie just shrugged.

“Thanks for dinner, Maria.” 

Ellie stood, leaving Maria to study the mostly-full plate that had sat in front of her. At least she drank most of her water.

“I have a guest bedroom,” Maria called after her, but Ellie had already planted herself on the couch.

Maria cut her losses - food and shelter were enough wins for tonight - said a goodnight, and turned to climb the stairs. Whatever next steps were to be had could wait until tomorrow.

“Wait...Maria…”

Maria stopped and turned around, hand on the banister. 

Ellie stared at her hands, and then raised her eyes. There it was, that pain behind them. Her voice was small, cracked, dry.

“I just need...I need to tell someone. I didn’t do it. I let her go.” 

Maria had only a vague idea of who the “her” was, but she didn’t press further.

There was so much weight in those words, and Maria knew that Ellie was looking for someone, anyone, to take this burden off of her. She wished dearly that it could be her, but they both knew better. In the desperate sadness behind her eyes, it was clear that Ellie knew that Maria couldn’t give her the forgiveness she was looking for.

All she could do was nod. “Okay.”

Maria started up the stairs but stopped herself in the stairwell, out of Ellie’s view.

Ellie had buried her face in her hands, and her shoulders shook. She looked small - far more like a child than someone who had left her family, who had walked across the country and back, who had watched her father die, who had the messianic weight of the cure on her shoulders. Maria wondered how long she had known this pain, how deeply she had carried it.

Upstairs, Maria quietly closed her bedroom door. She dawdled by it, one hand on the doorknob, chewing her lip. Finally, resigned, she walked to the dresser drawer, and dug through some old shirts until she found what she was looking for. 

The photograph was creased and wrinkled, subjected to new folding and refolding since she had removed it from its frame. 

She smiled at the state of Eugene’s hair - she still didn’t know what he’d done to get it up like that, or how he’d found such a nice suit jacket. He’d had to bend down slightly because her arm was thrown over his shoulders, and she wanted to chuckle at the ill-fitting but clean blouse she’d found for the occasion. Tommy said he didn’t care, said she looked like a dream anyways.

Part of Maria had felt awkward and stiff that Tommy seemed so comfortable getting married with no member of his family present. Of course, who was Maria to criticize, when her own brother and mother were long gone. She had ignored the twinge in her heart and tried to enjoy her day. 

It wasn’t the first time that Maria had been forced to adapt a shockingly normal, everyday occurrence into the ever-changing, dangerous world she found herself in. It certainly wouldn’t be the last.

Here she was again, at that other milestone, that separation that came after a long, inclement togetherness. Maria could hardly deny that her heart hurt, that part of the system she had built around herself was crumbling, that she cried often, in private, at the sudden and violent change in someone she had thought she knew.

A certain desperation hardened in her.

She didn’t want to believe that the person sleeping on her couch was just another ghost.

* * *

Tommy couldn’t seem to resist reminding her that he thought this was a great irony - that despite never wanting children, Maria ended up as a leader to a large community of people, most of whom desperately needed profound support and care.

Maria wasn’t surprised in the slightest when he was the first to broach the topic of having children. That was who Tommy was - he believed the world could get back to a place where something like that was possible. For all his good intentions, Maria refused to put her body on the line like that, worried that it would take her out of commission for too long.

As Jackson took shape, practicality was her highest priority - and that meant medical care. It was paramount, in this world where it wasn’t just the threat of the infected that could end a life, but also the threats that came with the simple, all-too-reachable phenomena of poor hygiene and poor sanitation.

Her old nursing training meant that she could step in from time to time, if the clinic was overwhelmed. But she learned quickly that it wasn’t enough.

It wasn’t the cure.

And that was what everyone sought, what everyone looked for. Desperate whisperings about it were easy to hear, especially through Tommy’s Firefly connections.  _ A vaccine, a vaccine, a vaccine _ ...it was their panacea. Maria wanted to be surprised at how much weight and change had been attributed to it - but she herself had to resist the temptation to fixate too heavily on such a powerful idea. 

_ I’ll get the vaccine, and my life will go back to normal. _

_ I’ll get the vaccine, and my family will come back together. _

Those first few groups of survivors who were folded into Jackson seemed to assume that the existence of such a place was conditional on the existence of a vaccine. They peered around Maria, as if she was hiding it behind her back. When she shook her head solemnly, their shoulders sagged.

But this was their hierarchy of needs, and it made sense. And Maria couldn’t help herself, couldn’t help that glimmer of hope that sparked in her when Joel washed up on her doorstep, with a girl who was  _ immune _ . What luck that they had been brought together - her community that was in need, and the girl who could save them all.

And then the whisperings of a vaccine dried up. 

Joel and Ellie returned to Jackson, empty-handed in every sense of the word. Tommy’s old Firefly contacts stopped responding to his transmissions. And slowly, the idea of a vaccine became memorialized in Maria’s head, something staggering both in its capacity for change and how far off and abstract it was.

It was their Rapture, and the arrival of their Messiah was now just as likely as any other - that is to say, not at all.

And on some level, it frustrated Maria to no end. She had put it upon herself to create this community. Was she failing by not providing them with what they thought would save them? Nothing but the vaccine could  _ ensure _ their survival. The disappointment and failure went through her, and reverberated back as something deeply unsettling that she could not ignore.

_ No help is coming _ .

She spiraled. The first time she had a panic attack was while reinforcing a section of the wall with a small team. An offshoot of a horde got through, and in the cacophony and bloody desperation, Maria had to put down some of her own. All her world narrowed to the targets in the sightline of her pistol, friend and infected alike, and she felt like she was breaking promises with every shot she fired.

Later that night, she couldn’t sleep - she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t get the images out of her head. She twisted away from Tommy’s touch violently, back pressed against the bathtub, gasping desperately for oxygen.

At the next town hall meeting, she was jumpy, distracted, and looked up and saw the open, fearful faces of her people, the people who had entrusted their lives to her.

Slowly, Maria realized that she was in no position to take care of the people she had tasked herself with watching over, unless she could take care of herself first. 

If a panic attack was enough to bring her down, how would her community respond to the end of the possibility of a vaccine? How could they go on, forced to reckon with the fact that this, for the foreseeable future, was their world?

And then it crystallized in Maria, solid and shining.

_ We should be able to do more than just survive _ .

Her people witnessed traumas every day. And the trauma of witnessing their loved ones’ traumas...it was a never-ending cycle, this world that they lived in. Most seemed to believe that only the vaccine would break the wheel. Maybe they were wrong.

Could they just...walk around that entire thing that had been held up with so much praise and energy? 

Could they build the world that everyone assumed could only come after the vaccine?

And so when Ellie stepped into her office, hair mussed and eyes red, and told Maria that she needed help - and not the kind of help that could be solved with bandages, or penicillin, or a splint - there was already a system, shaky though it was, for them to leverage. And Maria felt deeply, deeply thankful to her community, who had put in so much energy to make this happen.

She had to suppress the smidge of disappointment that Ellie hadn’t come to her earlier. She had known that Ellie was too frenetic to not do some kind of labor, even if she had just returned, and thought that the combination of farm rotation plus leatherwork would help her to come back to herself a little. 

She had first noticed Ellie’s uneasiness soon after her and Joel’s arrival back in Jackson. It had been hard to miss. Ellie was reserved, and kept to herself, but she watched the other kids out of the corner of her eye, stopping herself before she could join them. Maria knew enough to know that too much of that could make a kid turn on themselves. She was glad when Ellie started picking up journaling at her suggestion, and even more glad when the energetic, fiery Dina folded her into her friend group with easy confidence.

After Joel’s death, Maria had half a mind to suggest both Ellie and Dina start therapy - but that thought rapidly dissipated with her husband’s leaving. Guilt flashed through her at the thought that her sending them to Washington after him had damaged all three of them. She had to remind herself that for Tommy and Ellie, their motives were their own.

And this choice, too, was Ellie’s own. Maria removed her reading glasses and folded them carefully.

“Let’s talk tomorrow at breakfast,” she said. “Is that okay?”

When Maria mentioned therapy - literally, said the word “therapy” - she expected Ellie to respond in the same way that she herself would have responded: with exasperation, or with her eyes glazing over. Perhaps there would even be measured irritation at the disutility of talk therapy in a world where you were more likely to have your head ripped off by a clicker.

Maria had her arsenal of responses ready - especially that “not having your head ripped off by a clicker” hardly qualified as quality of life - but was surprised when Ellie just shrugged her shoulders.

“I figured it would be something like that.”

Maria blinked, then forged on. 

“Ellie, just...just so you know: this is the kind of thing where you get what you give out of it. It won’t...it won’t just  _ cure _ things.”

Ellie just stared out the window. Her gaze was far, far away.

“Back in Boston, back before…all of this...” She waved her hand noncommittally and sighed.

“Do you remember those stupid little fake airplanes that you’d wind up and then throw? With the rubber bands and the little propellers.”

“Oh...yeah.” Though taken aback at the topic, Maria smiled at the memory. “I had one when I was a kid. My mom was always afraid my brother and I would wind it so tight that it would break, or explode in our faces or something.”

Ellie didn’t look up, but grinned to herself.

“My best friend found one one day, and it still worked. Who would have fucking guessed? And we spent all day trying to see how far we could get it to fly. Right up until the sun went down and we had to make curfew. I think we all got into trouble for missing cleaning duty or whatever. But we didn’t care.”

For the briefest flash, there was open happiness on Ellie’s face. 

“I haven’t thought about that in ages,” she muttered. Her gaze was far away again, and she played with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “Maybe years.”

She took a deep breath.

“There’s something good out there. And I don’t want to think I’ve missed all of it.”

Ellie’s gaze met Maria’s, and for once the former’s was earnest.

Maria nodded her assent. “Let’s make it happen.”

* * *

Things sunk into a routine, both very slowly and very quickly.

Maria timed Ellie’s rotations so as to minimize Dina’s chances of running into her. If Dina wanted to seek Ellie out, she would do so herself, on her own terms.

Three times a week, Ellie spent an hour in the house of a former old world psychologist.

She was unreadable, a stone wall, revealing very little about her sessions. Consistently, she responded with a quip of “ _ Doctor-patient confidentiality! _ ” when Maria asked her how things were going. Maria would tamp down her frustration and remind herself that this was a victory in and of itself. And in any case, with the autumn harvest season wrapping up and winter approaching, she already had enough to keep her busy.

But more change was still upon them. When Ellie broached the idea of moving back to her own space, Maria was surprised and pleased, and tried to temper her feelings of anxiety. “When?”

“Tomorrow afternoon?”

And that was how Maria found herself, staring out of a slightly frosted window, mug of tea cupped in her hands, trying to absorb as much warmth as possible before stepping out into the crisp air. Ellie scratched at the drawing pad she had traded for recently, and Maria leaned over to admire the image of a galloping horse taking shape under her hands.

“That looks really good. Ready to go?”

“I was waiting for you,” Ellie scoffed, shoving her sketchbook and pen into her pack. “And thanks. It’ll be nice to have something to put up in my own place since it’s been cleaned out.”

_ Oh, fuck _ .

Maria held her breath until they were both outside, crunching through the snow, then carefully pushed on.

“Most of your things are back in there already.”

Ellie turned. “What?”

Maria hesitated.

“Dina asked if she could come by soon after she came back. Drop some stuff off.” 

Maria watched Ellie blanch, and then watched her try to regain some measure of composure. Finally, Ellie just crossed her arms in front of herself and continued walking in silence.

The first snow had come to Jackson not two weeks after Halloween. Maria followed in Ellie’s footprints, letting her take the lead. It wasn’t long before what had been Joel’s house loomed in front of them.

Maria slowed, giving Ellie an opportunity to turn towards the cemetery if she wanted, but Ellie slouched and kept walking. Thankfully, the path to Ellie’s little standalone garage was cleared of snow.

Ellie paused at the door, and Maria noticed her hands were shaking minutely. 

“Do you want me to…"

Ellie shook her head. “No...I got it…” She let the door swing wide, and the afternoon sunlight filtered in.

Boxes filled the space. They sat on the floor, stacked in the corners, placed with care. Ellie stepped inside gingerly and let her pack slide down to the floor, taking a deep breath. Maria followed, standing in the doorway.

“You good with this?” Maria asked. “We can always find you a new place.” But Ellie shook her head. 

“No, no...I can work with this.”

“Alright. Well, if you ever need it, you’re always welcome back at my place.”

“Uh...thanks.” Ellie rubbed at her arm, eyes fixed on the ground. “I didn’t deserve any of this.”

“Sure you did,” Maria said easily, trying to extend some compassion into the cold room with her genuine tone. The warmth didn’t seem to touch Ellie, but as she leaned against the wall, there was something there - a little more stability, a hint of a foundation.

Maria found her way back home. The day’s patrols would be relieved soon, undoubtedly bringing news of increasingly blocked passes at higher elevations. They had to be so careful this time of year, as their window for preparing for winter grew smaller and smaller. Maria rubbed her hands together energetically as she stepped inside, trying to stave off some measure of the cold.

Unbidden, her thoughts ran ahead of her - was it a bad idea to let Ellie move out? Should she have told Ellie about Dina moving her things earlier? How would they even begin to reconcile, if at all? Her questions and increasingly hyperbolic answers gnawed at her as she shrugged off her coat and turned on her bedroom light.

There was something on her bedside table.

It was a drawing. Maria picked it up delicately. 

In grays and blacks and soft smudged lines, there was a moth, wings spread in mid-flight - and underneath, three words written in Ellie’s precise handwriting.

_ I’ll keep looking _ .

Very, very tentatively, Maria let herself breathe.

Maybe, just maybe, the broken in this world weren’t doomed to stay that way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love writing these Maria chapters because they're an excuse for me to think on philosophical questions around human survival and communities of care in the post-apocalypse - but don't worry, we will get back to our regularly scheduled yearning and pining ASAP.
> 
> Those little wind-up planes I reference are [real things](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoBF2IWZuI4). I had one as a child and was obsessed with seeing how far I could get it to fly.
> 
> Let me know what you think and have a good week, friends!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you friends for the continuous comments and kudos. I love writing this - it resonates deeply with me - so it makes me very glad to see it touching others as well. Have a beauteous week, folks.

Dina dreamed of her family.

She dreamed of her mother, drinking tea, the scent of chamomile and bergamot floating around her. She occupied a rock ledge in perpetuity while New Mexico moved around her. Snow gathered on her shoulders, then melted away; brisk spring breezes pulled at her hair and her dress, pulled down into valleys from still-frozen mountain tops; summer’s dry heat settled like a blanket; and still, she sat and waited, waited, waited. The kettle grew cold and hot and cold again beneath Dina’s hands, as she tended it judiciously.

When the figure appeared, nameless and faceless, the lines in her mother’s face did not change.

Not even as a scream burst forth from Dina’s throat, scratchy with disuse. 

Not even as the figure stalked forward in threat, drawing forth all manner of weapon - a gun, a rock, a knife, their own hands.

Not even as her mother unsheathed her own knife and walked towards the figure with purpose, as Dina scrambled at her form and pulled back as hard as she could - as she felt Talia wind her arms around her waist, holding until her grip slackened, and their mother’s shawl fell away. And there was nothing underneath.

_Why did you let me go?_

She dreamed of dragging her feet across dry, cracked sandstone with Talia. They stumbled along, picking each other up, hands always laced together at their sides. Their movement was perpetual motion with no reprieve, no rest. All she could feel was unbearable heat and pressure and behind her, unseen but always present, that cacophony, that wild urge to run, run, run.

And then the sandstone was dark and slick, and Dina slipped and found her feet and looked down.

Flowers sprouted below her, purples and blues, lying low to the ground. They appeared first in cracks, in the barest flashes of light, but then swelled and burst forth in the dew of new life, encroaching on their path until it consumed them. They were borne aloft in a sea that carried them.

Talia’s hand was slick within Dina’s - too slick. She couldn’t hold on anymore.

_Why did you let me go?_

Her body was not hers as she was thrown up against something hard and jagged, something that caught her with all the gentleness and pain of a long-suffering survivor, and set her on her feet. And then there were no longer waves but people, so many people, and her instincts said _run_ but her heart said _stay_ , and they smiled with Talia’s smile and laughed with Talia’s laugh.

And hands were in hers, hands that were slick and hot, and Dina looked down and saw - it was not hands, but blood. She wiped her skin on her clothes viciously, but if anything it sunk deeper, twisted further, and Dina gasped and cried because she knew this blood - it was her own, and so it was theirs, it was theirs and it would stain her forever -

The blood congealed on her hands and formed into gristle and muscle and flesh, and Dina flung it away from herself but it kept coming; it left her grasp and more would appear, slippery and hot and wet and -

A hand touched her cheek, so tenderly, and Dina looked up into eyes that shone green against red, dripping skin; torn flesh that peeled away in so many wounds, far more than a body could absorb; ripped down to their very viscera, down to their very beating heart.

Dina screamed, and Ellie spoke with Talia’s voice.

_Why did you let me go?_

* * *

Dina woke violently. 

She lurched upwards, gasping, heart pounding. _Where-_

Her desperate energy was met with the cool silence of her simple room. The brisk, autumn morning was barely alight with the rising sun, and a breeze wormed its way from a cracked window to the base of Dina’s damp neck. JJ breathed in his crib, undisturbed. 

Dina slowed her breathing, and tried to collect herself.

She eased out from under her tangled blankets and tip-toed to the bathroom - so, so careful not to wake Robin and Susan, who slept on the floor above her.

Dina studied herself in the mirror.

She wore dark circles, tangled hair, a persistent exhaustion that had occupied her body for so many months. Far from deathly, far from shallow and sunken, but still worn and pushed and lived-in. 

JJ whimpered from his crib, and she winced. His whimpers picked up into cries, and Dina was beside his crib immediately. 

“Hey, little guy, hey,” she murmured, leaning down to pick him up. Each wail cut close to her heart, through the gash that had already been ripped there, inching deeper more and more easily.

She held him close to her body as he cried, face scrunched and fists tight, and she wanted to cry with him.

 _I promise you’re safe_.

“Shh, I know, shh…” 

He had slept so uneasily since moving back to Jackson. He hadn’t always been quiet at the farmhouse, but now settling was a perpetually difficult process, with stops and starts that leached into the late hours until they became early. He would quiet, and then another violent current would send him reeling, always responding, never relaxing.

After Dina had collapsed, it had taken him hours to settle, and she did not blame him. She, too, had seen a ghost.

She had wandered around for hours that night as her child screamed in her arms, and something screamed in her head, unending and clawing and desperate. 

Dina didn’t know why Robin and Susan put up with her anymore, but the truth was that she was afraid to try to live alone again. Her burdensome cowardice soured in her mouth. When she was working, the daycare center provided a necessary reprieve - but regardless, Robin and Susan’s time was not their own anymore.

Dina wondered if it was her own lack of creativity that made single motherhood so difficult for her. Had she imagined her future so deeply entwined with Ellie that any other reality was simply untenable?

Some part of her should have known this would happen. She was too close, too tightly wound, and because of that, she now swayed when she tried to stand on her own. She chastised herself for falling into the trap she had hoped she never would, for being left partnerless and floundering instead of standing strong like she always had. 

Dina hadn’t really understood the appeal of partnership until Ellie - to have someone by her side, supporting and holding and celebrating at all times. She could finally look forward with assured happiness, because they were doing something _together,_ something that was bigger than each of them. They were going to help each other through it all. 

They weren’t just there for a fuck or an escape or a feeling that would momentarily take them away from their present terrors - they were there for the work of it, for the tired days as new things took shape under their hands, because that was what made their love worthwhile.

Those early days after JJ’s birth had been a mercurial affair. Dina was wrapped up in a new anxiety, swinging easily from mood to mood, exuberant one minute and crying the next. 

Her days were turned inside out and upside down. Time hardly had any meaning anymore, outside of the motions they went through to tend this new life, to feed him and play with him and quiet his cries - and, sometimes, to just hold him through the fits that would not be quieted, through the fear and pain that sometimes overtook them all, when all they could do was hold on. 

But, oh, even as Dina tried to see the forest for the trees, she still couldn’t help but love the trees.

She loved that she saw the farmhouse from all hours now: when it sunk from sunset into night, and the snowy mountains around them were painted in reds and purples; and as it sleepily awoke from velvet darkness and met the frigid, bright mornings. She loved watching the sun come up while JJ nursed, the fire crackling as the world around her was thrown into relief.

She loved it when he fell asleep on Ellie’s chest, curled into a tiny ball, and sometimes she fell asleep too - and Dina had never seen her so relaxed, so at peace with where she was and where she wasn’t.

She loved watching Ellie hold him, rocking back and forth until he went from fussing to quiet. Sometimes she sang to him softly, sometimes she read to him from one of the books from her bedside table - 

“The strongest affection and utmost zeal should, I think, promote the studies concerned with the most beautiful objects.”

The early morning light painted Ellie’s skin in soft silvers and blues, and her low voice carried just far enough for Dina, leaning against their bedroom doorway, to hear. Ellie looked down and her expression was so soft, so tender, as if she held the world in her arms. 

“This is the discipline that deals with the universe's divine revolutions, the stars' motions, sizes, distances, risings and settings…”

One of his tiny hands grasped at her fingers and pulled them close, and Ellie whispered against his skin, instead of into the air.

“For what is more beautiful than heaven?”

Dina wanted to exist in that moment for all the rest of time.

“Dina, Dina, hey-”

The rich smell of soil came back to her first, and then the knowledge that she was kneeling in dirt, one hand weighted down; and it was midday, not morning; and she was alone, not with her lover and her son. She looked up.

“What?”

“Those aren’t ripe yet.” 

Robin squatted next to her, concern lining his face. 

Dina looked back and forth between Robin and the tomato in her hand, as if she could make him wrong by seeing. But he wasn’t - green leached into its body, too far to be reasonably pickable. 

Dina sat back on her heels and cursed. “Oh, son of a-”

Robin’s hand was on her arm. “It’s alright, it’s alright. I’m sure we’ll have some use for green tomatoes.” 

A smile curled his mouth and curled his words, and it was so soft, and it made Dina want to scream.

“Hey,” Robin said, so gently, because _of course_. “Why don’t you head home and rest? We’ve got plenty of folks helping out today. Surely you must be getting tired of this.”

Dina’s first instinct was to lie.

She didn’t want to tell him that she was so intent on this rotation because she wanted to get out of their house. She wanted to feel the earth beneath her fingers and coax new life from the ground and for once bring forth something with ease. 

Guilt and shame curdled in her stomach at the thought.

Her child was a miracle. He had survived so much before he was even born, before she had even acknowledged the life inside her. He had been her beacon, and Ellie’s too, as they limped their way back to Jackson. She thought of him as Ellie dressed her shoulder wound each day, biting her scream into a belt and picturing liquid brown eyes and bright smiles. Shapeless at the time, just wishes in her head, but still so treasured.

And raising him was terrifying. Raising him without a partner was terrifying. 

Raising him while she herself still felt like a child, grasping for the shadows that populated her dreams and haunted her reality, was _terrifying_.

At the most recent town hall, Dina crossed her arms and bit her lip when Maria announced the planned rewiring of some old safehouses with which she was familiar. She couldn’t leave Robin and Susan with JJ right now, not with their own responsibilities increasing as they neared winter. She missed the precision required by electrical work, the detachment from the surrounding world and singular focus on the system in front of her - on inputs and outputs and switches and voltage.

She could not leave him. She would not.

Oh, what he had been through already. 

Would JJ remember Ellie’s leaving? Would he remember how Dina cried continuously for those first few hours, how she paced? How she was rendered completely motionless by her indecision to stay or go and take back her family? How she found herself obsessively going over tracking tips from Talia, in the middle of cleaning the kitchen, rag still in her hand; how she counted the hours in her head, even as she looked away and tried to forget, the _tick tick tick_ thrummed in her; how she impulsively packed a backpack but left it by the door, and she refused to look at it throughout the day; and she locked herself and JJ in the bedroom, afraid that if she didn’t do something, she would find herself out on the trail.

The question of whether to let Ellie see JJ loomed large in Dina’s head, contradictory and heavy.

Keeping Ellie from him felt like a special kind of cruelty for them both. But any time she considered alternatives, fury gripped her heart like a vice.

Ellie had abandoned them, had left Dina’s trust in her trampled and broken. And so Dina had left the remains of their life.

 _History repeats itself_ , she thought bitterly. Dina had been leaving things behind her since she had first come to Jackson, breadcrumbs that showed what had been loved and then discarded in favor of survival.

As they traveled through Colorado, hers and Talia’s possessions dwindled steadily as they were forced to pack up their camps at a quicker and quicker cadence. Talia started to double back more and more and more, convinced that someone was on their tail, despite Dina’s protests. 

“We have to make sure. Come on, just a little longer.”

She spoke with low, even confidence, and Dina hefted her pack and let herself be persuaded. 

Her excitement at their journey had soured into a new pessimism. There was no way they could know that they were safe. They could work so hard to narrow their uncertainties down and down and down, but it would never be zero, not even with the greatest stroke of luck. They would always have to keep checking, around the next tree, in the next building, again and again and again. Dina tried to pry - surely they were being so vigilant for a _reason_ \- but Talia kept to herself.

Now, looking back, Dina wondered if Ellie hadn’t been the first person she loved to hide entire parts of herself.

By the time Jackson received them, Talia bristled away from their helping hands. Her trust was hard-won, if at all. Where Dina put down roots, Talia remained closed off, refusing to reach down and settle.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” Talia snapped one evening after dinner. “We just got out of there and you want to jump back in? Why?”

Dina frowned, but twisted out of her sister’s grip, folding the patrol schedule back up. “It’s what I want to do. It’ll help people. You can’t _stop_ me.” She wanted to go with Ellie, she wanted to be out in the wild again, and she wanted this new experience that, for once, wasn’t fucking running for her life.

There were threats out there, and Talia knew it, and Dina wanted to say to her, _there are threats everywhere - now is your chance to finally live_. 

But instead of dissipating, Talia’s panic, at threats realized or otherwise, turned inward like a poison. Dina would hold her hands as she hyperventilated, as she quailed under the great pressure of the world around them, of its emptiness and inevitable uncertainty. 

“You’re home, you’re home, it’s okay…”

She pressed a cool cloth to the back of Talia’s neck, and ran a bath for her, and rubbed moisturizer into her hands. Talia quieted and pressed a hand to her forehead, emanating shame from her curled, collapsed form and her hitching voice:

“I’m sorry. I can’t stop seeing them...I can’t stop seeing you, hurt…”

Dina would shush her and grip her hand, desperate to give her something grounding.

It crept up on Dina, that disbelieving, horrible realization of not recognizing someone anymore. Who was this person who had been such a bright light, such a strong, flexible force? Who had led them out of New Mexico, who had danced exuberantly with no shame, who wore her faith like a badge of honor?

It made Dina want to go back in time and make herself vanish. Would Talia have ended up so paranoid if Dina wasn’t around?

Guilt twisted in her when she noticed the dark circles below her sister’s eyes, unfading; or how her weight dropped, slowly but steadily; or how she seemed weaker. Dina tried to encourage her - to go outside, to enjoy the world. Something. Anything. Talia was wasting away in front of her very eyes.

Dina eventually succeeded in plying her sister into sneaking out - she already knew some of the ways to do it, after occasionally vanishing with her new friends. “We could go hunting,” she murmured at Talia’s side. “Teach me something new.” Talia’s agreement was the brightest victory Dina had felt in months.

She should have known. Of course it would happen when they went out without guns, when they just used the old bow and arrow that Talia had smuggled into Jackson. 

She should have known.

Dina’s excitement and happiness was a fog, obscuring her usual careful preparations and planning. All she could see was the tentative new future with her sister, whole again.

And so when the nameless figure bore down on them, and Dina tried to get her breath back - holding her arm against her stomach where the pipe had slammed into her - she felt that dark creep of awful inevitability, that horrifying repetition: _it’s happening again_.

Talia was on her feet faster, eyes dark, hair flying. She pulled Dina to her feet roughly, placing her body between her and the advancing threat. Dina scrambled for purchase on her sister’s jacket, voice rising to a frantic timbre. “We need to _run_ , we need to go-” 

But Talia shook her head, resolute.

“They’d just come after you.”

And then Dina was shoved backwards, tumbling back down the path towards Jackson, too far to run up to Talia before their attacker would meet her. 

And Talia strode on, with grace and power in her body that Dina had never seen before, with so much purpose and conviction.

In that moment, Dina wanted nothing more than to burn it all to the ground, that cruel, wild, rampant, uncaring world - to burn away the choice she had to survive until it was not a choice anymore.

Maria’s patrols found her, curled into a ball at the base of a tree, shaking and vicious. They tried to turn over the dirt where Talia’s body had lay prone, to obscure the blood, but a stain still remained as they walked away. Before passing through the gates, Dina slipped the hamsa bracelet from her sister’s cold wrist. 

Dina was convinced that it was the journey from New Mexico that had put that paranoia inside Talia. It was caused by no particular weakness inside her sister, but rather a result of the threatening external world that reached inside her with sharp claws ,and rearranged all her parts until she became unrecognizable. 

And from this, Dina learned that connections in this world were dangerous - that one had to be flexible in order to slip in and out of these claws. Attachment meant change, and reminders - cycling back over and over again - of pain, of fear, of death. 

And Talia’s last words to her thrummed through her head, on a continuous, never-ending loop.

“Let me go.”

* * *

Dina dreamed of a stranger.

The stranger had so many names, and she could not remember them anymore. The stranger had so many faces.

She remembered them hiding, protecting themselves behind hands clasped close to their chest.

Dina pried and poked, playful and curious at first. And the stranger handed over pieces of themselves, letting themselves be uncovered by Dina’s confident hands.

The stranger said _I see you_ , and Dina replied with _I see your missing parts_.

Dina let the stranger touch her cheek, and the touch was so familiar, so simultaneously soothing and fiery, and the stranger said _I know you_ and Dina replied with _I know your pieces, I see the delicate thread that connects them._

And the broken pieces were sharp, and cut deep, even as Dina tried to handle them delicately. Even as she moved them with so much care and caution and love. And as she pieced them together, the shape under her hands was not the stranger she had come to know, perverse in its wholeness.

The stranger said _I love you_ , and Dina replied with _I do not know who you are_.

And someone’s hand was on her shoulder, shaking her gently.

Dina inhaled sharply as the world returned to her, crashing around her all at once - the sound of birds, chirping; the watery, weak light of early morning; JJ’s cries, her heart jumping with each one; and she rolled over and met Susan’s brown eyes, crinkled with worry.

“Oh, damn, I’m sorry Susan-”

Susan’s hand was still on her - “It’s alright, hey, it’s alright” - but Dina made to shrug her off.

“Did he wake you up?”

“Might’ve,” Susan said, smiling. Dina didn’t smile in return, instead pushing herself to her feet, bare feet meeting the chilly hardwood floor. “Robin woke up early, and I can never go back to sleep after he’s up anyways, so...” 

She trailed off.

Dina automatically made to start changing JJ, and Susan perched on the end of the bed. Silence grew between them, interspersed by JJ’s diminishing cries and babbles.

“So, uh, early day for Robin?” Dina questioned as she helped JJ out of his sleeping onesie. God, her own child had been crying and she hadn’t woken up - what kind of mother was she?

“The first snow always makes him nervous,” Susan replied. Dina tried to shimmy JJ into his jeans, but he twisted away from her, giggling.

“I keep reminding him that we have _greenhouses_ and we’ll be fine, but every year I have to talk him down.”

“Mhmm,” Dina replied absently, trying to button JJ’s shirt as he babbled and grabbed at her bangs.

“But he likes to be prepared, of course, and - dear, do you want help?”

Dina paused in her third attempt to pull JJ’s shirt down over his belly - he kept pulling it upwards energetically - and shook her head. “No, no, you’ll be late…what did you say last night about some of the kids rebelling because you wouldn’t let them throw glitter at each other?” 

Susan chuckled weakly.

“Outright revolution,” she said, chuckling weakly. “We’ll see what happens when I really put my foot down about them gluing paper to each other.”

“Little tyrants,” Dina said, plastering a smile on her face as she finally gathered JJ into her arms. 

Dina saw Susan out the door, into the bright morning, before settling JJ on her hip and making her way through the living room. She brushed her fingertips over a picture of Jesse and his father, their arms thrown around each other. JJ babbled excitedly at the sight of his reflection.

“Gotta get you a haircut soon, hmm? Otherwise you’ll look no better than your daddy.” Dina smiled and kissed the top of his head. The rhythms of domesticity lulled her and she swayed back and forth absently.

She thought of her picture of Jesse, and Ellie, and herself, in a box in the basement, snapped by her on a particularly beautiful spring day.

“Make sure you get my good side, D.”

It was the fifth, or tenth, or maybe twentieth selfie that Dina had taken that day, much to her friends’ chagrin. Or rather, to Ellie’s chagrin and Jesse’s continuous delight.

“‘Good side’? What the fuck does that even mean?”

“I dunno, I saw it in a magazine once. Where are you even gonna get those developed?”

Dina stared down at the camera and turned on her heel, walking backwards from her friends.

“I know a guy,” she replied grinning. She held the camera up so that Ellie and Jesse were framed awkwardly. “Say cheese!”

Ellie gave a weak smile, while Jesse’s was ridiculous. Dina slapped his arm for that.

“You’re obnoxious.”

“Not as much as you.”

Dina rolled her eyes, then grabbed Ellie’s hand. “Come on, I think we can get some really cool shots over by the stables.” She felt Ellie pick up the pace. Jesse would nag her and nag her, but Ellie would follow, like a puppy, easy in youth.

Dina loved Jesse. She loved how calming he was, how he could make her put away things that she didn’t want to think of, how he spoke about the future and abstract, far-away things like travel with such easy confidence. Loving him felt logical.

But it snuck up on her, loving Ellie - its depth, its gravity, its utter _difference_ from anything she had felt before. She caught herself counting the freckles that dusted Ellie’s nose and furrowed brow one night as they sat by a bonfire.

“Fuck...it’s too dark, I can’t read this…”

Dina chuckled and leaned back on her hands. “Why’d you bring an astrology book to a bonfire?”

“It’s not _astrology_ , dude. That stuff isn’t even real.”

“Your meteor shower doesn’t sound very real. Purse...pur..per-what?”

“The _Perseids_ , dude. Come on, you’ll love it.”

“Are you sure I didn’t just come out here because that’s what _you_ want to do?”

“Wait, do you hear yourself? _Dina_ going somewhere because _someone else_ wants to go?”

Dina smacked her shoulder.

“Come on, dude, I know you better than a-”

But Ellie interrupted her suddenly. “Look, Dina, there’s one! Look!”

A flash of light arced across the black of the sky, starting from somewhere unidentifiable and ending nowhere, a fleeting glance of brilliance from another world.

Ellie was right. Dina did love it. 

She loved searching the dark velvet of the sky for more meteors, for their light in the darkness. She loved Ellie’s raucous exuberance when more fell, and whooped and hollered right along with her. They kept score for who had found more, elbowing each other when they thought the other was lying. Their conversation drifted into and out of the celestial, the spiritual, the fantastic. They argued about a god they had never seen, then lay on their backs in the damp grass as the sky continued to fall around them.

It was the best night Dina could remember in a long, long time.

And then, like a great curtain, Talia’s death closed around her. And Dina sat there in the dark. 

She heard muffled sounds, but they went unacknowledged. It didn’t really matter. Some outer shell of hers went along with her daily activities, making niceties, checking the requisite boxes that indicated function.

Inside, she was unreachable. Her days lulled into the same rhythms. She closed and locked Talia’s bedroom door, too scared to walk in and see what had been left behind now.

And it seemed that no one would come sit next to her. No one knew the way in, not even Jesse.

Dina sat in that darkness and thought it would never end. 

So maybe it was some primal survival instinct that made her follow Ellie to her place one evening, plant herself on the bed, and let her place a video game controller into her hand. Or maybe Ellie had convinced her - she couldn’t remember.

The game was absurd, loud, fleeting. Dina felt uncoordinated and clumsy, fumbling with the controls again and again, but Ellie just repeated what they were, over and over until Dina was successful. She cheered when Dina did something that she didn’t think was remotely deserving of a cheer, and steered Dina towards little secret places, gaps in the pretend-world that let her sneak past enemies unscathed.

The hours bled on and Dina sank into the rhythm of the game, rapidly catching up to Ellie’s reactions, yelling and laughing along with her. She didn’t realize that the sun had set until Ellie yawned and complained about a training she had in the morning. Dina paused in the doorway, tugging on her sleeve.

“How did you know?”

Ellie frowned. “Know what?”

“To do…” She gestured absently. “All of this.”

Ellie tugged on her fingers and looked down.

“I hate it when people just tell me to talk about things...I dunno. Sometimes I just want to...do something else.” Ellie paused, uncertain. “Go somewhere else.” She nodded to herself, as if now convinced, and Dina smiled.

“Well...thank you,” she said softly, and Ellie smiled and whispered her reply.

“Of course.”

Later into their friendship, when Dina replayed that moment in her head, she imagined herself stepping back into the soft warmth of Ellie’s room, close enough to feel her breath ghosting along her lips, and touching her warm skin and her red hair and tasting her mouth -

Dina wished she had recognized the gravity of her feelings at the time, behind the haze that was Talia’s death, behind her need to stay transient and unbothered and aloof.

It was love.

Behind desperation, behind a new gaping loneliness. But it was still love.

Despite her request to Maria, Dina still saw Ellie from time to time, on her way to and from rotations. She still seemed to be favoring one side of her body, and she walked with her head down, and seeing her was like whiplash for Dina. It was so jarringly out of place, to see the cause of her horribly contradictory, complex feelings and have nowhere to place them.

But these sightings dwindled and dwindled as October wore on and the first snow dusted Jackson, and Dina found herself chastising the resurgence of her old habits - making mental note after mental note about how many hours had passed since she had seen Ellie. It was too close, too close to the old habits she had fallen into at the farmhouse, and in Seattle before. Too close to the life on which she had turned her back.

Colder weather settled around Jackson. 

JJ babbled more and more, crawled everywhere, picked up everything he could, and stood with assistance from Robin. His first steps were surely coming soon, and pride and anxiety swirled in equal parts in Dina’s gut.

She remembered with a pang how Ellie would hold him under his armpits and let his feet dance across the hardwood floor. 

She cornered Maria after a town meeting one morning.

“Has Ellie asked after me?”

Maria paused, brow crinkling. “She has...she hasn’t tried to find you though, has she?”

“No, no...can you tell her something for me?”

 _I know you better than anyone_.

“Can you tell her that I want to talk?”

Maria relayed Ellie’s plan back to her the next evening - she could talk, in the Tipsy Bison, an hour before sundown. 

Excitement coursed through Dina, tempered by the knowledge that Ellie had chosen a public place to meet. Maybe it was to ease any pressures or habits of falling back into old intimacies, but all Dina could feel was the separation, the new and cold distance between them.

Dina didn’t know if the time it took to survey the crowded bar lasted for seconds or years. It didn’t make sense, to search for something that occupied her dreams out here in the banal, casual existence of the real world. 

But Dina found her, of course.

She was thin, hunched over in the booth, wearing a brown jacket that almost made her blend into the shadows on the wall behind her.

And when Ellie looked up, Dina wanted to cry.

It all felt like too much, to be in her presence again. Tears welled in Dina’s eyes as she played with the hem of her sweater. This was Ellie, Ellie, _Ellie_. This was her love, her heart, her joy and her sun. Suddenly it was hard to breathe

“Hi,” she croaked, watery.

“Hey,” Ellie whispered.

Her soldier, her partner, the warmth in her nights and the strength at her back.

Dina swallowed hard as she sat down. Her lack of direction, lack of a compass, made her sway.

“I didn’t see you for a couple weeks,” she started, tentative.

Ellie nodded. “Yeah, I had some...stuff. I’ve been...talking to someone a lot.” She glanced down, away.

“Yeah?” Dina tried to keep the lightness in her voice.

“But...but it’s been going well. Really well.”

“That’s...that's really good,” Dina said thickly.

Ellie looked up again, chewing on her words, starting and stopping before finally:

“How is JJ?”

Dina swallowed. “Really good,” she said, voice still trembling. “Sitting up and standing and babbling his head off.” 

Ellie swallowed hard, and Dina saw something like shock settle behind her eyes.

She expected Ellie to ask to see him, but Ellie just nodded, wiped at her face, and continued in another direction.

“How are you?”

“I’m...I’m okay.” _Lies_. “I wanted to talk to you.” _I need you_.

“Yeah, I...I wanted to talk to you too.”

Something in Dina sparked.

“Really?”

And Ellie was taking a deep breath. Here it was, here it was, those words that would take her pain away, those words that would soothe her agony, quiet her sleepless nights and her tossing and turning. _Yes, yes, yes_ …

“I’m staying, Dina. I’m staying here, and I’m getting help. I let Abby go.”

The first thing that struck Dina was that there was weight in her words, something practiced and intentional. Dina could picture Ellie practicing in front of a mirror, tweaking the intonation, the timbre, the volume, because it was so, _so_ important.

And as the seconds dragged on, or maybe hours, the knowledge settled around Dina - and it dawned on her, in abject horror.

It wasn’t enough.

It wasn’t even _close_ to being enough.

It paled in comparison to everything that had happened, to everything Dina had grappled with. 

It was a floodlight, throwing Dina’s naïveté into sharp, sharp relief, until she was too ashamed to even remember why she had believed in it in the first place.

“That’s, uh...that’s really good,” she forced out. Uneasiness swirled in her, like she had put herself into a place she didn’t want to be. She felt the sudden, awkward feeling that she had to back out, that this shouldn’t be happening now. 

But Ellie kept going, and Dina wanted to run.

“And I was wondering...I want...if we could…”

Ellie blinked. And there was hope in her eyes - tentative, but hope nonetheless.

Dina inhaled sharply. _Fuck_.

The pain twisted in her again. The image of Ellie with Joel’s jacket on, pushing Dina away. The deep, horrible betrayal that came when something promised was taken away. Not just promised, but _realized_.

She was so _fucking_ stupid.

“No.”

Ellie blinked again.

Some part of Dina told her to stop, to leave it at this, but another part burned bright and told her to keep going, to rip the bandage back completely. She finally gasped, as if she could not catch her breath.

“I _trusted_ you. We built a _home_ , Ellie, we had a _family_. You told me that this was finished.”

Ellie’s eyes flickered away, then back, then away again. Her voice was gravelly when she spoke. “I was wrong...I didn’t know how hurt I was.”

 _Neither did I_.

The thought came to Dina, unbidden, and she shied away from it, bile rising in her throat. She forced it down - and anger came up instead.

“ _Why_ didn’t you tell me?! I could have helped you!”

“I didn’t...we…” Ellie sucked in a breath. “There was no one around, I didn’t want to make you move back to Jackson for this, I…”

“We could have come back here, and found someone to help you! My God, Ellie -”

“You were just...always talking about Jesse, it always seemed so easy for you, so happy, and I thought…”

“Thought what?” Anger made Dina push on, even though part of her turned away and cried - but she wanted to see, finally, the depth of this chasm between them.

“Thought _what?!_ ”

“You got what you wanted,” Ellie said, spreading her arms weakly. “Why would you want to deal with me after that?”

“Did you think you were doing me a _favor?!_ ”

“I was doing what was gonna happen anyways!” Ellie snarled, and the anger that flared in her eyes was wild and primal and took Dina aback.

“Why the _fuck_ would anyone stay with me? I didn’t deserve any of it. It’s just like everyone else before, Riley and Marlene and Tess and Sam and Henry and Jesse and Jo-” She cut herself off, gasping, eyes watery and far away, face contorted in pain.

Dina swallowed. She didn’t recognize most of those names. 

Her voice swelled with emotion and cracked as she spoke. “I was _never_ going to leave you behind. _Never_.”

Oh, God, the depth of her love. 

It consumed her. It filled her ears and her lungs and her eyes, and she thought she would drown in it one day.

Something registered inside Dina, some kicking, primal instinct to _leave_. She stood shakily. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this right now…” 

“ _Please_.” 

Ellie said it with so much softness, and Dina’s heart twisted. She held up her hands as if shielding herself. 

“There’s so much I don’t know about you, Ellie. Why didn’t you _tell_ me? _What did I do wrong?_ ” Her voice cracked again, and she swallowed hard as she backed away.

“I’m glad you’re getting help.” She tried to inject as much genuineness into her voice, past the depth of her pain. Ellie swallowed and nodded. “I’m...I’m sorry…”

 _I’m so fucking stupid, I’m so fucking stupid_. 

Tears fell thick and fast down her face, and the biting wind was cold on her cheeks as she walked. Jackson thrummed around her, quieting down slowly for the night, and Dina wanted to scream, wanted to run, wanted to cry. 

She wanted to reach inside her own mind, right to the source, to the place in her heart where her precious memories lived - Ellie laughing as she painted their bedroom in the farmhouse, skin and clothes splattered in eggshell; Ellie singing in their kitchen as she plied Dina with a spoonful of whatever she was cooking, spiced and hot and savory, and warmth slipped down into Dina’s stomach and pooled there; Ellie kissing her at night and covering her body with her own and reaching inside her and crying with her, _Ellie Ellie Ellie_...

Dina wanted to rip it all out.

Gone, gone, gone.

* * *

The harder Dina grasped for stability, the more it seemed to slip away from her.

Establishing a routine with JJ seemed impossible. His waking and sleeping times were increasingly unpredictable, and she felt torn between tending to him and confronting the tidal wave of her own exhaustion in the interim. 

Susan and Robin were far too kind. She felt like a perpetual warning siren, going off under their heads again and again, blaring and obvious in her weakness.

Perhaps her exhaustion had been emanating off of her, because after the next town hall meeting, Maria pulled her aside. 

“Just get it over with and tell me I look like death,” Dina deadpanned, and a weak smile flashed across Maria’s face. She took a breath.

“I just wanted to check in,” she said simply. “Are you...are you getting the help that you need?”

Irritation flashed within Dina, but she tamped it down. “I’ve survived a hell of a lot worse than this,” she said with a weak smile. The statement soured on Dina’s tongue. She swallowed and ignored it. 

“Are you sure?”

Dina’s head throbbed and she grit her teeth. That familiar instinct crested in her, the one that said to steel herself and _survive, survive, survive_.

“I’m sure. I’m fine.” She could still shut this down and get out.

“You talked with Ellie?”

“You could say that.”

“Dina, I need to know if I made a mistake-”

“No, I made a mistake. It’s my fault,” Dina replied, voice clipped.

“Can I do anything? I’ve...sort of been here…” The clumsiness of Maria’s statement sent another flash of irritation through Dina.

_You have no idea what I’ve been through._

“It doesn’t matter anymore. There’s nothing I can do.”

“Dina...are you sure everything is okay?”

Her eyes watered. All she could see was Talia’s crumpled form, Ellie turning away...all strangers, all transformed by this terrible world, all unreachable. Maria kept going, softly.

“You know you can wait for her to meet you where you are. You don’t have to be the only one who works hard.”

Dina swallowed. “I failed…”

“You did what you could.”

“I _failed_ …” Her voice broke.

“No, Dina-”

She pulled away abruptly. “Why are you doing this?”

“I’m just saying I _care_ , Dina, and-”

“And I’m not like you, Maria! I fought for her! I didn’t just _give up!_ ”

Silence billowed between them.

Maria’s mouth hardened and her chin lifted by a centimeter. Something inside Dina quailed.

“I know you don’t mean that.”

Dina looked away.

“...I don’t.”

Maria’s shoulders sagged and she sat back down, dropping the subject. She surveyed Dina.

“You have a whole life here. You can make something out of that. You try to take care of so many people...why not take care of yourself first?” 

_Can I?_ She was too tired to feel exasperated.

“I need to head home,” Dina said with finality, turning on her heel and walking away. 

The sounds of her boots on the hardwood floor reverberated through the church as she left, nothing filling the space of nothing.

Dina had to force herself to stop outside of Robin and Susan’s house, letting the wake of her anger settle. Shame settled around her like an itching blanket. She would need to apologize to Maria tomorrow, there was no doubt in her mind.

But it hurt - to admit that she had lost something in that way. That, despite everything she had done, something she loved dearly was gone.

Susan looked up when Dina eased the front door shut. “Hey there.” Dina was sure she was radiating waves of angry energy, but she tried to soften immediately.

“Hi,” Dina replied softly. 

“I already put JJ down,” Susan said, and Dina paused.

“Do you want some tea? It’s getting chilly out there.”

Dina rubbed at her arms absently. She thought of the wake she had left outside, of the embers that still burned in her from her conversation with Maria.

“Okay.”

She settled on the couch and Susan puttered in the kitchen for a minute, before returning with two mugs. She handed the larger one carefully to Dina.

“Thank you,” she murmured, leaning in to blow across the surface of her tea. It rippled, leaving its own wakes that bounced off of the edge of the mug and across the surface. She couldn’t help but register that Susan was watching her.

Dina inhaled anyways. “Chamomile? How did you get this?”

“Robin has some unusually good trading skills.”

“I don’t think I’ve had this in years,” Dina said, taking a sip. 

Dina was not a scientist by any stretch of the imagination, but as she held her tea in her mouth and savored the flavor, she thought of Ellie, eyes wide and hands gesticulating, as she painted a picture of multiple universes - of uncertainties that beget whole ranges of possibilities, hundreds of thousands of paths forward to worlds so similar and so different from this one.

Susan touched the circlet on her wrist. “The kids at the daycare saw that bracelet you made for me.”

“Oh?”

“Would you like to help me make more? I was just in the middle of one before you arrived.” She gestured to the half-formed bracelet in front of her. It was clumsily made thus far, alternating between too much looseness and too much tightness. The sight of Susan’s genuine attempt made some of Dina’s anger dissipate.

“Looks way better than my first try,” Dina said, smiling as she set down her mug. “Mine didn’t look better than rats' nests for a long time.”

Susan chuckled. “It’s easier with two people anyways. I don’t have anything to tie this to, to pull against.” 

“Yeah,” Dina replied. “Here, I can help.”

They weaved purple beads onto leather cording in a persistent, calming rhythm. Dina felt herself settle at every knot, every tied-off row. Her tea grew cold in her singular focus until there, in her hands, was something beautiful that had not existed before.

That night, Dina dreamed of Talia.

Corn kernels fell from Dina’s grip, dribbling into the dirt under her shoes. They left her hands in great arcs, and the chickens were upon them immediately, squawking and ruffling and jockeying for position.

“Do you know what love is?”

The tea kettle on the table had grown cold, and Talia lifted it and settled it gently in a cupboard.

“Love is: trying, failing, and trying again.” 

New Mexico melted around them, and the dense, deep green of fir trees sprouted from under their feet, and then melted away into crumbled planes of granite and snowmelt, which in turn gave way to fields of wildflowers.

“Truth. Pain.”

The blood on Talia’s shirt stained Dina’s hands a deep, bright red, but there was no panic. It did not matter what the surface looked like - what was underneath was whole and untouched.

“Generosity.”

She walked under a star-strewn, wide open sky, shouldering her backpack, filled not with weapons but circlets and bracelets and charms. They fell behind her, like breadcrumbs.

“Trust, that will no longer be taken for granted.”

Beyond them, the sun rose, fiery orange and red and luminary. Talia’s hand extended towards her, and Dina took it. She gripped hard and held on.

“And bravery, baby sister.”

The road unrolled before her - all potential, all pitfalls, rolling and winding. 

“Bravery, in the wrappings of fear, but with so much strength.”

Talia squeezed Dina’s hand, and they stepped onto their path together.

* * *

Dina woke calmly, consciousness easing back into her like a puzzle piece slotting into place. She breathed and she became aware - of her rumpled blankets, her tangled hair. She pushed herself into a sitting position, blinking at the stillness of the room around her.

JJ gurgled from his crib, crying before she had even emerged from the bathroom. 

“Hey, hey, I know,” Dina murmured, reaching for him, old routines once again rising to meet her. He had been in her arms for a few minutes before there was a soft knock at the door - it creaked open to reveal Susan’s concerned face.

“All good here?” 

Dina ran a free hand through her hair. JJ had quieted, but she still had to get him dressed, and ready for the day, not to mention herself -

She waited for that familiar curl of anxiety in her. It never came.

“Actually...actually, if you have time, I’d love some help.”

And Dina let her in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don’t worry y’all, I promise that I’m writing a love story here. Ellie and Dina will get there.
> 
> I wrote myself into a bit of a corner with Talia making it to Jackson alive, and I know most folks write her dying on the road. I don’t believe we get canon confirmation of this, but my mistake if we actually do!
> 
> I may have made Ellie more of a space / physics nerd than is warranted:  
> \- The multiverse theory that Dina remembers Ellie discussing is loosely based on the [many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse#Level_III:_Many-worlds_interpretation_of_quantum_mechanics).  
> \- Ellie also quotes [Copernicus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus) in this chapter.
> 
> Finally, the line "They argued about a god they had never seen" is a reference to the song [Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand](https://genius.com/Primitive-radio-gods-standing-outside-a-broken-phone-booth-with-money-in-my-hand-lyrics) by Primitive Radio Gods:
> 
> _We sit outside and argue all night long_  
>  _About a god we’ve never seen, but never fails to side with me_
> 
> Let me know what you think, friends!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back, friends! Enjoy Chapter 8, and have a lovely week. I'm not sure if Chapter 9 will be posted next weekend or slightly later, but I'll try to have it up at a similar cadence.
> 
> Also, any typos are mine, and will hopefully be fixed soon. I posted this while sitting in a laundromat between obligations, oops.

“Can you tell me how it happened?”

The bright sunlight stung her eyes, made her blink until they watered, and she raised a hand to shield her face. Her shoes scuffed the fine, sandy dirt below her, and the heat pressed around her - dry, dry, dry.

Sharp pinks and reds and purples bled into her vision as it cleared - wildflowers, creeping up stucco buildings, winding through cracks of age and violence both - stubborn and beautiful. One left the wall in the hands of a man - tall, dark-skinned, with a shotgun slung over his shoulder. He tucked it into the breast pocket of his shirt.

“Joel and I ran into them in Pittsburgh. They said they were heading west when we found them, to go find the Fireflies.”

Rocks fell from somewhere behind her, and Ellie turned to see another man scrambling out of what had once been a building, now flattened and cracked and crumpled. Here, too, were wildflowers, peering out of the darkness and wreckage and swaying in the afternoon breeze.

The first chuckled. “Watch your step, old man!”

The second figure straightened up, taller than the first, face hardened and lined but familiar. He studied the structures around them as he approached, holstering his own pistol.

“Hey, it’s a privilege to get old in this world,” Henry replied, mouth twisting into a half-smile. “Take my advice and maybe you’ll get there too.”

Sam snorted - “Whatever you say” - and they made their way across the clearing, slowly, eyes still raised for threats. Occasionally Sam bent down to pluck another wildflower, to join the other ones in his pocket.

“Annabelle likes to press these,” he said when Henry shot him a questioning look. “Not much in terms of flowers in the QZ, so I do what I can.”

Their figures soon grew hazy in the distance, and Ellie followed, moving so slowly but still keeping pace. The dry air ruffled her hair. 

“They were brothers. They’d been separated from their group, and they were trying to find their way back when we found them.”

The scenery around her melted into the dry infrastructure of a compound, bustling with afternoon activity.

Sam now held the hand of a little girl who skipped beside him energetically, braids bouncing. A bright pink backpack, with the name _ANGIE_ written on it in marker, bounced along with her. They queued up in a line next to a tent with a red cross painted next to a Firefly logo.

“And they traveled with you for a while?”

“Yeah.”

Sam and the little girl had reached the front of the queue, and as they ducked inside the tent, Ellie was in there with them as Sam boosted Angie up to sit on the exam table.

“You wanna hold my hand?” he offered, while a faceless, smiling doctor prepared a syringe. Angie nodded vigorously, swallowing.

“It won’t hurt, right?” she said, extending her arm.

Sam chuckled. “It’ll sting just a little, but I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise.”

“And we can go see Mama after this?” Hope tinged her voice.

Sam smiled brightly. “You betcha, baby girl.”

The doctor inserted the syringe and time slowed - Ellie could see every minute movement as Angie cringed, as her father hugged her tighter against his chest, gentle and strong.

“Yeah, they traveled with us for a while. And then Sam got bit. And then…” 

And then Angie was wiping stray tears from her face, and Sam was smiling wide.

“And then they were both gone. So fast. I didn’t…I can’t...you know what the last thing Sam said to me was?”

The doctor carefully placed a colorful bandaid on Angie’s upper arm, blue with yellow polka-dots. Sam made a great show of kissing it to make it feel better.

“He said he was scared that there’s still real people under the infection, and they just couldn’t stop themselves. He said he didn’t know where they went, when they were like that...and I said I didn’t know either. What happens after.”

Sam and Angie left the tent, hand in hand once more. And then Angie scampered, backpack bouncing, into the arms of a woman who lifted her easily. Angie showed her the arm with the bandaid, and the woman energetically praised her for being so brave, so strong, for _surviving_ , and Ellie couldn’t breathe -

“Hey, easy. Listen to my voice, alright?”

And Sam hugged his family, saying out loud - because it was still such a miracle of science that it didn’t feel real unless he spoke it - thank whatever god was up there for the a vaccine, for the _cure_ \- 

“Can you name Saturn’s moons?”

And the carpet under her feet was wet with blood, and instead of standing in front of her Sam was on top of her, clawing and raging - 

She gasped, words sticking in the back of her throat. “Titan...Mimas…”

Henry’s body was crumpled and broken across from her, gun still held loosely in his hand -

“...Tethys...Dione...Iapetus…”

And then she was standing in front of the farmhouse, grass swaying around her - 

“Telesto, Pan…”

And her feet were on the ground again -

“...Rhea...Hyperion…”

And she could breathe again.

“Phoebe...fucking _Phoebe_ …”

“Sorry?

Ellie sat back up from where she had hunched over her arms, and leaned back on the couch, letting her head fall back. She took a deep breath. “Who names a moon _Phoebe_?”

A laugh, the scratch of a pen. Ellie felt a curl of embarrassment at the triviality of what she had just said, compared to where her mind had gone. She studied a crack in the ceiling. 

“How are you doing?”

Ellie let the silence billow between them.

“Are you with me?”

Finally, Ellie leaned forward and studied her hands again. “Yeah…” She cradled her head in her hands and waited. There was a place that she didn’t want to go yet, even if it was the next logical step.

“Sam getting bitten didn’t have anything to do with you.”

And there it was. The gravity of it all made Ellie’s stomach drop, the fact that no one understood, that inevitable truth - that anyone who came into contact with her was doomed.

“Even if the Fireflies were able to create a vaccine, that was after his time.”

“But he _should_ have gotten it,” Ellie replied, and her voice broke. “And now he’s dead and I’m here and...and…”

A long pause.

“You can’t carry his death forever, Ellie.”

And that seemed so impossible. It was so, so permanent, it had not left her for years, and why would it leave her now? How could she set down something that had become part of her?

“It’s not fair...I didn’t do anything to deserve survival…and Sam didn’t do anything to deserve dying.” Her voice shook and cracked at the unfairness of it all, the paradox - how two people could not be less destined for the paths they were on, and still end up there anyways.

“I’m sorry, Ellie.”

And tears blurred her vision, and that was all she knew for a while.

Ellie didn’t know how long she cried, just that her hoodie sleeves were damp and her eyes felt puffy and there was an aching, empty hollow in her chest and an overwhelming, pressing grief at the knowledge that there was nothing she could do, she was alive and others were dead because she was alive and there was nothing she could do -

Eventually, she came back to herself, head in her hands as her sobs quieted.

A gentle, soft voice - “We’re almost at the hour. Do you have somewhere to go where you’ll be safe?”

Ellie nodded.

“Take a walk, okay? Enjoy some of that fresh air before it gets too cold. I’ll see you in a few days?”

“Yeah,” she said thickly, trailing off and standing. She turned to leave and paused, hand on the doorknob to the foyer, looking back. “ _All_ of Saturn’s moons? There are sixty-two of them.”

A shrug, a smile. “Then that’s a good choice for grounding, isn’t it?” 

Ellie bit back a weak smile.

Snow crunched under her boots and a frigid wind snuck under her collar as she exited. The cloud cover was high and thick today, coloring the sky in the same grays and off-whites that blanketed the streets around her. Ellie shoved her hands in her pockets and set off.

Jackson moved around her and it was still surreal, still jarring. So much about it felt entirely out of place, and yet it was the place she had been coming back to for months. 

It reminded her of the day they came home. Ellie remembered feeling so driven by the desperate need to _not_ be in Seattle anymore that she rushed them through the last several days of travel. She would jolt out of nightmares that they would return to a Jackson that was burned to the ground, or a Jackson that had never been there in the first place - and they were doomed to go on forever, to drag themselves from trauma to trauma, tired and sore and bleeding, until the end.

But of course, they came upon Jackson’s walls in due time. And they were lucky that they ran into Maria’s patrols a mile away from it - the terrain had become rocky, not insurmountable but demanding of dexterity and energy that Ellie doubted any of them could muster. She breathed the barest sigh of relief as she watched Dina clamber up behind a mounted rider, arms up to spot her in case she lost her balance. Dina took her hand in her own for a second.

“Almost there,” she murmured, squeezing weakly.

An hour later, Ellie sat in an exam room in the clinic with Dina, who kept rubbing her knuckles and whispering that they made it, that they were back. But when she looked away Ellie saw her wide-eyed shock at the world around her, and knew she wasn’t the only one who felt like they had arrived somewhere that was so familiar and also so unfamiliar.

Ellie wanted to sob when the rapid flutter of a heartbeat came over the ultrasound machine, and the grainy image of new life moved on the screen and moved inside Dina. Dina laced her fingers through Ellie’s and pressed a kiss to her cheek, and both of their faces were wet with relief and disbelief and exhaustion.

How did the world move around them after trauma? What did it find in itself that allowed it to continue? Ellie didn't know, except that despite all the stupid, horrible things she had done, it went on. 

There was no stopping it, for better or for worse. 

The thought continued to consume Ellie while she stood beneath the showerhead, letting hot water course down around her. Her feet were a blur beneath her, barely visible, and she let the water sink into her eyes and ears and it was all she could see or hear. Maybe if she stood still enough, she would vanish, completely covered, drowned...

And then Dina’s hands were on her back and Ellie withdrew with a gasp, turning round.

“Hi.” 

Everything about her was soft - her eyes, her skin, her voice. Ellie could barely hear her over the sound of the water.

Dina’s hair was down, and Ellie couldn’t remember the last time she had seen it like that. It was longer than she remembered, easily falling past her collarbones and almost past her breasts. Ellie played with a few loose strands, pushing them back behind her ear, as Dina pushed Ellie’s own water-logged hair out of her face, smiling softly.

Dina stepped close and rubbed her thumb along Ellie’s jaw. “I almost forgot what you looked like under all that dirt,” she murmured, voice still barely discernible. She rubbed at Ellie’s jaw until her skin was pink and clean, and continued across her cheek, her eyebrows, the bridge of her nose. Dina’s touch was soft but firm, and Ellie leaned into it, wishing she could stay there forever.

And then the scar caught her gaze, pink and rippling and glaring across Dina’s chest. Ellie gently pressed a thumb against it, and the months’ worth of dirt and grime coursed down, over Dina’s rounded belly and legs. But the scar remained.

Ellie blinked and shook her head, swallowing hard. The tension that she had tried so hard to suppress was back, coiled up in the back of her throat. Dina’s hands were on Ellie’s face, trying to direct her to meet her eyes again.

“It’s okay.”

So soft, always so soft. Softer than Ellie deserved.

Ellie shook her head, voice cracking in a “No”. And Dina took Ellie’s wrists in her hands and placed them around her waist, while Ellie continued to repeatedly shake her head, whisper rising into a whine, “No, no, no, no…”, and the walls were closing in, and everything was so real it _hurt_ , and -

Dina wrapped her arms around her and Ellie finally broke, crying into the crook of her neck. She didn’t know how long she stood there as the sobs wracked her body and Dina rubbed circles into her back, murmuring against her wet hair and holding her. 

Dina rocked them both from side to side until Ellie quieted, tears washed away in the hot water. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, leaning back, shame curling in her stomach.

But Dina shook her head. “I told you, it’s okay.” She pecked Ellie’s lips, and Ellie held her closer for a moment, deepening their kiss into tenderness.

“Now help me wash my back,” Dina said as she pulled away, and Ellie gave a watery smile, sniffling. “There’s a spot between my shoulders that I haven’t been able to clean for months.”

But still, as Ellie gently pushed Dina’s thick hair over one shoulder, she couldn’t help but count every single new scar on Dina’s body - every one that she didn’t recognize since the first time she’d seen Dina naked and beautiful underneath her, the first time she’d run her hands over her body and swore to herself that she would kill anyone who ever marred her again…

Ellie couldn’t remember how they went from the shower to the bed, wearing sleeping clothes that she didn’t recognize. They were too big on her, hanging loosely from her body, but they didn’t smell like iron and death, and so she didn’t care. Her hair was longer now, made longer by being wet, and Dina ran a brush through it, gently untangling snags that she found, humming to herself as she did so.

And then the light was off and Dina was curled around her, and Ellie, used to sleeping hard or not at all, didn’t know what to do with all this softness, all this domesticity. She felt like she should be waiting for _something_ , looking for _something_ , the idea of letting go into safety seemed ridiculous and unwarranted…

So when Dina twitched and whimpered in a nightmare in the very early hours of dawn, Ellie was privately satisfied - and then repulsed at her own reaction - that it gave her something to do, as she cupped Dina’s cheek and gently pulled her into consciousness.

“Hey, hey... You’re home. You’re home, baby...”

She felt Dina take a deep, shuddering breath and press closer into the warm curve of Ellie’s body - and Ellie held her, and couldn’t help the wave of hopelessness that threatened to pull her under.

The same hopelessness leached into her now. Therapy was supposed to help her see all the joy again, the things that she _knew_ she was missing and ignoring, but right now all she could see was the pain, in minute, explicit detail. It stretched on for miles, until it was all that filled her vision. Where was the normalcy that she saw in everyone else? What was wrong with her?

A yell went up in the distance, and Ellie jumped. _Fuck this_.

Wringing her hands, she ducked into a back entrance to the Tipsy Bison, all the better to avoid the congested front. She felt primed to turn and run from the gruesome things she was uncovering. The thought made Ellie’s hands shake, made her lean back against shelves of grains and potatoes and slide down, barely conscious of her coat catching on splinters.

She didn’t know how long she sat there before she was disturbed.

“Are you sitting in a pantry?”

A figure leaned against the doorway, backlit as the door behind them creaked open and someone shuffled through, and then closed again. And there was Cat, propped against the doorframe, arms crossed and eyebrows raised in very minor surprise.

Ellie felt a pang of jealousy that, while she still felt gangly and awkward in her body, Cat had grown into something graceful and powerful that supplanted any teenager awkwardness to which Ellie had been privy. Wherever she was, Cat seemed to cut a cool figure, effortless and relaxed.

Ellie dug past her distress for her old, dry humor and found it more easily than she expected. 

“I like to read the ingredient labels.”

“ _Please_ don’t tell me this is where you’ve spent the last several months.”

Ellie tipped her head back at that, letting it knock against the wood behind her, unable to contain her exasperation. “Who do you think I am?”

Cat shrugged in mock confusion and stuck out her hand. “A hermit?” 

The old rhythm of their jabbing almost gave Ellie whiplash. Ellie just scoffed, clapped a hand around Cat’s wrist, and allowed herself to be pulled up to her feet.

“I’ve got a table. Wanna catch up?”

Ellie dawdled, fiddling with her pockets. “Uhh…”

She didn’t have anywhere to go, really. So she nodded and followed Cat through the crowded bar, wincing as the crowds closed in around her, staring down a Cat’s boots as they wove their way to a booth.

“Thank God you’re here,” Cat said as she slid into her booth. Ellie sat down across from her, and without prompting Cat pushed a small plate of rolls under Ellie’s nose. “Those are yours.”

Ellie blinked. “ _Technically_ they’re yours.”

“Alice thinks I might have a gluten allergy,” Cat said through a mouthful of chicken.

“A _what?_ ”

Cat swallowed. “Gluten. Bread makes me sick to my stomach now, or something. Whatever, they gave me rolls even though I asked them not to, so just eat those before I lose my damn mind.”

“Jesus, that sucks,” Ellie replied, studying a roll with only her right hand, keeping the other hidden under the table.

“Tell me about it.”

Ellie was painfully aware of the fact that they were two people who had not spoken in a very long time, who were now past the niceties required when reentering into casual, public conversation. She had half a mind to bolt, to come up with some excuse -

“Hey, listen. I was really worried when your girl came back to town without you.”

Ellie froze, setting the roll down and wrapping her arms around herself. She knew if she looked up, she’d find Cat’s eyes directly on hers. No fear, no hesitation - Cat was forward like that.

“So it’s really nice to see you around again. You livin’ with Dina?”

Ellie inhaled sharply, horribly aware of the sheer _magnitude_ of explaining she’d have to do to get Cat up to speed - but maybe Cat got the message anyways, because she backtracked immediately -

“No pressure, dude, really. I know how these things go.”

Ellie let the air out of her lungs and brought both her hands onto the table, ripping the roll in half. “Thanks.” If Cat noticed her two missing fingers, she didn’t say anything.

“I know it’s not my place to ask, but if you want to talk-”

“I’m actually, uh, talking to someone already.” Ellie’s voice was stronger than she expected.

Cat raised her eyebrows. “Good on you, Williams. I was gonna suggest my therapist, but it seems like you’ve got that handled. Probably for the best - I think good old Samantha’s a little overwhelmed right now. Who wants to be a therapist after the end of the world, eh?”

Cat grinned, and for a second Ellie turned over the fact that Cat was also in therapy - wondering about the reasons why, and whether or not she had anything to do with it - before remembering to keep the conversation going.

“How...how are you?”

The question felt dull, uninspired. Ellie readily admitted she hadn’t done the greatest job of communicating in their relationship - but they’d had the excuse of being young and fumbling, and not knowing what they were doing. And although it didn’t work out, Ellie was thankful for Cat - thankful that someone had seen something in her, enough to want to stick around, before and now.

Despite the banality of the question, Cat responded with energy.

“Could be worse! Had a couple of _interesting_ clients lately. Oh hold on, you’ll like this.” Cat turned to dig through her bag while Ellie continued to nibble on her roll. A second later, Cat slapped her notebook down onto the table, beckoning Ellie forward.

“Is that...a shark wearing a party hat?”

“Absolutely. He told me he wanted a whole sleeve of party hat-wearing animals. I told him to start with the shark and come back in six months.”

Ellie chuckled, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “People are so fucking weird.”

“Speaking of! Let’s see what my favorite ex-client has done to my masterpiece.”

“Hey!”

Ellie scoffed and rolled her eyes, but felt a flash of shame as Cat studied her right forearm with practiced touch, cataloging new scrapes and scars.

“Jesus Christ, Williams, did you go through a wood chipper?”

“Something like that,” Ellie replied, biting her lip.

Cat whistled low. “You wanna come in for a touch up?”

Ellie studied the skin of her wrist, where the ink was criss-crossed with new scars and faded in the sunshine. Well, at least this had an easy fix.

“Why not,” she said, deadpan.

“Sick.” Cat slapped her hands on the table in finality, swinging her bag over her shoulder. “Saturday morning?”

That was sooner than Ellie expected, but she tried to temper her shock and just nodded. Cat saluted her as she wound her way out of the bar, and Ellie waved back tentatively. She then rubbed the back of her neck and took a deep breath, trying to ease that feeling of whiplash from her body.

At least there were some things that she hadn’t absolutely fucked up.

* * *

“How does it make you feel, thinking about that?”

The wire that would trigger the trap was pulled tight, so much so that when she brushed her fingers over it she could feel the trap mechanism, and how easily the explosion would be set off. The wire glinted in the setting sun, just barely visible.

She set another one around the corner, between two dilapidated buildings, very, very carefully. She checked the tensions in her rope traps, the ones that would be triggered by someone opening a door. Finally, she shouldered her pack, heavy with supplies.

“It just makes sense. It’s just...what’s true.”

The sun sank lower and lower against the horizon, glinting off the bullets she had carefully placed on a table. She recorded their counts under the day’s date.

New materials were spread across her work table, wires and plugs and flammable things that would be cobbled together into more traps, increasingly complex and circuitous ways to take a life.

“What if you needed help?”

The sun sank lower and lower, and she ended the day as she always did - sketching the people who wandered beyond her town, voices barely meeting her ears - the people she would keep away.

_What are you afraid of?_

_Ending up alone_.

A tall man with black hair that flopped into his face, holding hands with a dark-haired woman wearing a bracelet. A blonde woman with a braid, joking easily with a boy while he re-strung a longbow. A man who spoke with a twang to his gravelly voice, smiling while being admonished by a woman with a bandana in her hair.

“Wouldn’t think I deserved it, to be honest.”

Her body made a half-circle on her mattress, curled and coiled, as the voices faded and the darkness took her. There was no point in thinking too hard about it - it would just repeat over and over again the next day, in that better world, where safety was guaranteed only because of loneliness.

“And does that feel true to you too?”

The walls of the farmhouse were around her again, painted orange in the setting sun. The furniture was gone, the walls empty and bare save for a line of framed pictures that hung on the wall. She followed them up the stairs, dragging her hand against them, feeling the hot, sticky blood on her hands smear over them -

“Feels pretty fucking true.”

Their bedroom was across the hall, but she turned her back on it. The door in front of her was what interested her, and she clasped the doorknob. Locked, like always.

But if she pressed her ear against the wood, she could hear it - muffled screams of pain and the awful high whistle of something swinging through the air and crunching against flesh, and her name, over and over again, _Ellie Ellie Ellie_...

And then Ellie inhaled and she was back on the couch.

 _Fuck_.

“Take a minute.”

She panted as if she’d just run miles. And maybe she had - she was running in fucking circles in her mind, after all. 

“I tried to get help.”

A pause, waiting patiently so she could continue. 

“From Dina. I saw her a few days ago.” It felt like giving up, to admit what she had done and how she had failed.

“Oh? What did you say to her?”

“I told her...I told her that I let Abby go. I told her I'm talking to someone.”

“And?”

“And...and she said that wasn’t good enough for her.”

The truth was always there, in the back of her throat, poised to come out - and it emerged so naturally, easy and practiced over the years.

“...I’m not good enough.”

Steepled fingers, soft voice.

“Are _you_ happy with what you did? Are you happy that you let Abby go?”

“I’m...I don’t know what I would have done if I had killed her. I don’t know if I would be here if I had.”

“And how do you feel about deciding to get help? Our sessions?”

“There was just...nothing left, you know? I feel like if I didn’t do something, I’d just be...swallowed by it all. I’d still be just as lost as I felt after letting her go. I wouldn’t be a...a person anymore.” Ellie sighed.

“I thought she loved me.”

“I think she has to take care of herself. Of her son. We’ve touched on this a little.”

 _I could take care of him_. _Of both of them_.

“She has to protect herself first. Even if she loves you, this is still true.”

Ellie’s heart twisted in a vice. “Yeah.”

“And you have to take care of yourself first. Do you have other friends in town?” 

The dry practicality of the question, compared to the immense task it was meant to address, and the magnitude of what Ellie was feeling, was jarring.

“Maybe. I guess…I might have plans this weekend.”

“That’s wonderful, Ellie. Really.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

Another heavy pause.

“You’re worthy of love, Ellie. Even if it doesn’t always come from where you want it to.”

The old tiredness washed over her, and she wondered if she would ever truly believe that.

That evening, in the low light of her room, Ellie traced the new scars that cut through her tattoo, and thought about pain: the pain that came with violence, with conflict and intention to harm; and the pain that came with love, with the gritty, hard work that beget something beautiful.

* * *

Ellie stood outside the door and felt her hands shake.

 _Come on_.

She could fucking do this. She could grab that door handle and turn it. She could.

 _It’s just Cat. Come on_.

What would be on the other side of that door, blood or chaos or gore or another person she loved prone and dying and -

_God dammit._

The door swung open and Ellie jerked her hand back, reeling.

“Ellie!”

And here was someone who knew her name, who Ellie distinctly did _not_ know. She was overwhelmed by a mass of long red hair that clashed with a bright orange sundress, the entire visage backlit by soft sunlight that shone through the house’s windows. _A dress in winter. Okay_.

Ellie wracked her brains for a name, anything that Cat had mentioned when they had talked, until - “...Alice?”

“The one and only!” the so-called Alice replied, sweeping Ellie into a rib-cracking hug. Her vertebrae popped and Ellie winced, then tried to temper her expression as Alice put her down, beaming all the while and beckoning her inside energetically. 

_Cat...what the fuck_.

A flowery scent hit Ellie as she stepped instead, strong and bright, and Ellie felt like she had stepped into a veritable garden. Mason jars stuffed with dried wildflowers were stacked along the windows, accompanied by long-stemmed flowers that Ellie couldn’t identify, sprouting from pots of dark, rich soil.

“Cat trades for the seeds,” Alice explained as Ellie brushed the delicate petals, brushed in purples and whites, with her fingertips. She suddenly wished she had her paints and sketchbook with her.

“I was just cooking when I heard you dawdling outside!” Alice said, returning to the kitchen island, where a bowl of filling sat on a flour-dusted cutting board, next to a stack of circular slices of dough.

“Sorry about that,” Ellie muttered, shoving her hands into her pockets as she watched Alice palm one of the slices, scoop dough into it, and crimp it shut. Ellie was pondering the exact physics of how that happened when Cat emerged from upstairs, wiping her hands on a towel and making a bee-line for Ellie the moment she saw her.

“Alice found gluten-free dumpling wrappers, can you _believe_ that?”

“I guess I’ll have to,” Ellie replied, since she had absolutely no frame of reference for how difficult it was to find gluten-free anything.

“I’m magic,” Alice replied casually by way of explanation, as Cat waved Ellie across the main room.

“Come on, I’ve got a set-up in the living room.”

Recovering from the surprise that was Alice, Ellie followed Cat down a hallway to a spacious, well-lit room with a couch, an ornate wooden table, and a set of chairs. The table was draped in plastic. “Must be a nice upgrade, huh?”

Cat scoffed. “My tattoo stations have _always_ been hygienic.”

“Which is why you did my second round of shading while sitting in a closet,” Ellie jabbed, shoving her hands in her pockets as she studied the hardwood ceiling.

“Fuck you, Williams, you should remember that the power was mostly out. I had to _work_ with what I _had_.” Cat punctuated her words as she pulled on a pair of latex gloves with a snap.

“Yeah, and my back was never the same after sitting on that floor for hours waiting for your ‘artistic vision’ to come to you.”

“‘Artistic vision’ cannot be _forced_ , power outage or otherwise,” Cat replied, spinning a chair round and flicking on a light. “Sit.”

Ellie tried to remember the last time someone had touched her with kindness. The effort made something like anxiety rise in the back of her throat as she watched Cat drag a razor along her skin, removing baby hairs. If the sheer number of scars bothered Cat’s work, she didn’t say anything. 

“I’m gonna clean the skin now - is that okay? It’ll feel cold.”

“So clinical,” Ellie muttered, tamping down her anxiety again, and Cat rolled her eyes.

“Yes or no, Williams.”

“Go for it.”

The chill of the swab and the smell of alcohol on her skin bit through some of the comfort and familiarity that Ellie had gathered around her - and unbidden, the images came to her, of bandages wrapped clumsily around wounds, the stinging splash of disinfectant, that frantic desperation -

“All good?” Cat had finished and was watching Ellie carefully.

_Europa...Callisto…_

“Yeah.”

“Alrighty.” Cat turned back towards the table and turned back, instrument in her hands. “I’m gonna do a little test since it’s been about a _hundred years_ since you were in here, alright?”

“Cat, my whole forearm is covered in ink, I think-”

“Ah ah ah, I remember what happened last time…”

And then the pen buzzed to life in Cat’s hands, and then those hands were on her skin, and Ellie was glad that she had been warned, because she felt the vibration in her _bones_ , in that way that made her want to push Cat off of her and run - it was inside, _inside,_ under her flesh, like that arrow that came out of nowhere in Seattle, like the bullets that grazed her skin, like -

_...Himalia...Ganymede..._

“Still good?”

“Yeah,” Ellie whispered, inhaling shakily.

“Let’s do this thing. Where should I start?”

It felt strange, being allowed to have so much control over something happening to her body.

“Uh...up top. But on the fleshy bits first.”

“You got it,” Cat replied, and she leaned over, putting gentle pressure on Ellie’s arm to hold her still.

The buzzing was in her bones again, interspersed by Cat judiciously wiping at her work at quick intervals, and Ellie felt herself relaxing somewhat as Cat worked down her arm - lulled into the easy rhythm of Cat’s casual but precise efforts, of finally having someone else do all the hard work. 

“You need to eat, babe!” Alice’s voice shook Ellie out of her reverie, and she turned to see the redhead walking down the hall, brandishing a tray of finished dumplings.

“I’m with a client!” Cat replied, but still craned her head back to let Alice place a whole dumpling between her lips. Cat grinned, issued an “‘uv you” around her dumpling, and leaned back over Ellie’s arm.

“You want any, Ellie?”

“Uh...”

“Almost as good as my mother’s,” Cat added. She grinned as Alice aimed a clove of garlic at her head. “I said almost!”

“Your mother herself told me that this recipe was _passable_ , and we all know that’s a gold star coming from Emmy.” 

Cat rolled her eyes in mock exasperation, and Ellie finally shook her head under the pretense of refusing - her head still spun slightly from the flowery smells that engulfed the room.

Time went on - Cat asking which area she should move to next, and Ellie indicating. She watched with wonder as her ferns came back to life, black and stark against her skin

Alice flitted in and out of the kitchen, a constant red blur in Ellie’s periphery. She finally perched on the arm of the couch, but with the same energy of a bird poised for flight, coiled like a spring while her orange dress pooled around her. Now that she was closer, Ellie could see that it was embroidered from top to bottom with fine, detailed needlework in a lighter orange thread - Alice’s torso was covered with blooming flowers, birds stretching their wings in flight, and trees curling upwards.

“Cat isn’t the only one in the family who’s good with needles,” Alice said, winking when she saw Ellie looking.

“That’s fucking amazing,” Ellie said quietly, and the next half hour or so passed in a blur as Alice filled her in on how many hours it took her to find the right thread, how many times she messed up a pattern before it came out how she wanted it.

“But it was worth it in the end,” she said, stretching out along the couch.

“And it’s orange because…?”

“Because the infected are orange!”

Ellie blinked.

“Please, you think I’d let them have a monopoly on such a pretty color?”

And she walked out and left Ellie to ponder that, but before she knew it, Cat was shutting off the light and packing up her pen. “All done!” she said with finality. “Keep that thing wrapped up for a few days, yeah? I don’t want Josie talking my ear off again about another abscess coming through her clinic.”

“ _Another_ one?” Ellie flexed the fingers on her right hand, angling her arm this way and that while Cat prepared a bandage. Her ferns were solid and clean once more, and it felt strange to see them with such definition.

“I’m kidding.” Cat patted the top of her head as she stood, and Ellie felt like a child. “Take care of yourself, huh, Williams?”

Ellie shrugged.

“Thanks for the d-”

Alice appeared suddenly, shoving a tupperware into her hands. “More for later. We’ll see you soon, yeah?” The easy confidence in her voice almost bowled Ellie over.

Part of her would have taken Alice’s question and filed it away as another lost cause - no, they would not see her later, because she shouldn’t have the energy to get out of bed and get to her rotations, much less make it through the congested streets of Jackson and dodge stares and wonder what Dina was doing right this second and whether she would ever be able to look her in the eyes without flinching -

But Ellie couldn’t find it in herself to say no. 

“Yeah. I’d like that.”

* * *

They were well into winter now. Rolling storms deposited snow in great swaths, and the weather alternated between cool, crisp beauty and ferocious, whistling chaos. Lights were strung up in anticipation of the holiday season, and Jackson transformed into a glittering, frozen postcard in a matter of days. Ellie was privately grateful that she wasn’t on patrol rotation right now - she didn’t envy the folks fighting their way through snow drifts and ice and the frozen bodies of the infected. 

And the deeper into winter they got, the closer they got to _that_ day. Ellie couldn’t help but continue to count it down as she drifted into consciousness each morning, dread settling like a pit in her stomach at the inevitable passage of time.

She didn’t know how her therapy - how more and more reminders of her own failings, more and more reasons to hate herself - was supposed to stave off the terrible dark pit that was reaching for her.

All she could see was Nora’s crumpled body, drifting with the waves, bumping into the prone form of Abby - and Abby’s body stumbling to life and lurching towards her, even as she tried to run, even as she felt hot wetness on her hand and looked down to see her knife driven into the chest of the scarred boy, as he fell to the ground and convulsed and died -

And turning to see Dina, eyes wide and seeing and knowing, as Ellie tried to scrub her skin of the blood that wouldn’t wash away -

_There’s so much I don’t know about you, Ellie._

_Please_ , she would cry, _please, I love you, I don’t know how this happened, I don’t know who I am, please_ -

And Dina would turn away, and Ellie would try to run after her but she was rooted to the spot, wet hands grasping at her ankles and her legs and pulling her under the salty, stinging brine, and Dina was gone and Ellie was alone -

“I don’t know how to do this. Live with...with all of this. It just...it makes me hate myself even more.”

And to possibly not have Dina on the other side, waiting for her -

There was a long silence.

“There’s some part of you that still has to take care of yourself, you know?”

Ellie stared at her hands. That didn’t seem possible.

“There’s a difference between doing the work to get better, and destroying yourself and sabotaging that chance to get better.”

“What if it’s all I can see? Everything I did wrong. Everything that should be sabotaged.”

“There are good parts to you, Ellie. I promise that there are. Sometimes we can’t see them, and we need others to remind us that they’re there.”

“It doesn’t feel real.”

“I promise it will. It might take a thousand reminders, but it will. You don’t have to do this alone.”

The reminder - repeated again and again and again - made Ellie think of the strange, cobbled-together nature of her life, the comforting familiarity and jarring unfamiliarity of it all - like opening a room in a house where she had lived for years, and finding something she had never seen before.

There was her fridge, often empty or sparsely populated by staples she rarely touched - now piled with leftovers from Maria and things that Alice shoved into Ellie’s hands every time she left hers and Cat’s place.

And she had her favorite books, still not placed in their usual spots on her shelves but left stacked precisely on her desk, probably by Dina when she had come back. Ellie let them stay there, pulling different volumes from the stack when one caught her fancy. It gave her something to look forward to, to touch something that Dina had touched.

It made her think of the first few days after JJ’s birth, when everything felt like a miracle. Every tiny yawn and blink of his eyes and squeeze of his fist around her fingers was a brilliant phenomenon, simplicity beguiling the immensely complex processes and firings underneath - thousands of tiny pieces working together to make something beautiful happen.

It felt stupid, to think of herself like she would think of a child.

But maybe it was stupid to do otherwise.

Okay. Maybe she would go to that dance. Okay.

_There's a valley of sorrow in my soul_

_Where every night I hear the thunder roll_

The church was starting to get stuffy in the push of bodies, and Ellie tugged at the collar of her shirt, wishing someone would open a door. The slow song had lulled most attendants out onto the dance floor, at least to sway if nothing else, but Ellie withstood that tide and sipped her whiskey. She saw a flash of bright red hair.

“Come on, Ellie!”

_Like the sound of a distant gun_

_Over all the damage I have done_

Alice had danced with everyone, sometimes wildly moving from partner to partner, and Ellie didn’t know where her energy came from. That energy continued to course through her as she made her way towards Ellie, practically buzzing.

_And the shadows filling up this land_

_Are the ones I built with my own hand_

Cat was still standing over by the bar, and Ellie tried to shoot her a _Please save me from your girlfriend now_ glance, but Alice’s hands were already around her wrists and she was already leading her away. Ellie noticed with exasperation that Alice was actually _taller_ than her, and she could tell it would take quite a bit of strength to fully resist, so she sighed and let herself be pulled along. 

_There is no comfort from the cold_

_Of this valley of sorrow in my soul_

“How are you doing?”

Ellie shrugged noncommittally and adjusted her arms on Alice’s shoulders. “Alive?”

“You’re worse than Cat,” Alice replied, smile never leaving her face.

“Then I am worse than Cat in a lot of ways,” Ellie said flatly, shrugging.

_And the rock of ages I have known_

_Is a weariness down in the bone_

“How’s therapy workin’ for ya?”

Ellie frowned and sighed. An answer didn’t come to her for what felt like a long time. 

_I used to ride it like a rolling stone_

_Now I just carry it alone_

“Feels like I’m drowning. Feels like I’m just doing everything wrong.”

Alice’s eyes were unexpectedly far away at that, staring at some point over Ellie’s shoulder.

“Yeah, that’s how I felt for a while too.” 

Ellie's eyebrows went up, while Alice took a breath and her face became momentarily serious. The transformation would have made Ellie stop in her tracks if they weren’t dancing. “Sometimes it just fucking sucks,” she said simply.

“Yeah,” Ellie murmured, shaking herself from her shock and continuing on. “Feels like I’m, like...hanging over a big black hole, and I can’t hold on anymore...but if I let go, I’ll just be lost in it forever.”

_There's a highway risin' from my dreams_

_Deep in the heart I know it gleams_

“It’ll get easier one day. And if you need it, we’ll catch you.” Alice said it with so much simple confidence and finality, so much conviction, that it made Ellie almost trip over her own feet. 

_For I have seen it stretching wide_

_Clear across to the other side_

“Right, babe?” Alice said, and Ellie realized with a start that Cat had materialized next to them.

“I have absolutely no idea what you two were discussing, but if Alice is in, I’m in,” Cat grinned.

“I’ll fill her in. ‘Til next time,” Alice said as she nudged Ellie back towards the bar.

Ellie stepped away and watched Cat and Alice dance. Alice dipped Cat gracefully, and then Cat spun round and tried to do the same to Alice, but the both of them stumbled off balance for a second before catching each other, laughing. Ellie found herself smiling along with them.

_Beyond the river and the flood_

_And the valley where for so long I've stood_

It felt strange, to use her muscles in that way. But then again, it felt strange to _not_ use some of them, to let herself be held up. Ellie swayed.

Maybe Alice was right. She would just have to trust that they would catch her.

_With the rock of ages in my bones_

_Someday I know it will lead me home_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope it's somewhat clear that the scenes happening while Ellie is in therapy are all in her head - they're scenarios that she's imagining as if there were a cure, and people she loved hadn't died, etc. This was inspired by my own experiences in recounting trauma, where I usually fixate on the "what could have been." Y’all will probably recognize the exercise Ellie doing throughout the chapter as grounding to work through panic attacks.
> 
> The scene where Cat touches up Ellie’s tattoo was maybe the second thing I ever wrote for this story. Very glad to finally have it out in the open! Exes though they are, I really feel like queer / LBGT folks would take care of each other in times like these. I also tried to make Cat’s tattooing practices at least somewhat trauma-informed. 
> 
> The song that plays at the dance is [Prayer in Open D](https://genius.com/Phoebe-bridgers-prayer-in-open-d-lyrics) by Emmylou Harris. I specifically had Phoebe Bridgers’s cover in mind while writing this. Bonus points if you spotted the recurring valley imagery between that song and [Through the Valley](https://genius.com/Shawn-james-through-the-valley-lyrics), which appeared in the first TLOU2 teaser trailer.
> 
> Finally, “Are you sitting in a pantry?” is not a reference to any piece of media ever, but it is something that my friend / fellow TLOU fan was asked while on a Zoom call recently. It was too absurd for me to not include somewhere in this fic. Here’s to you, J.
> 
> Cheers, y'all!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You ever write something for fun and realize you’re just writing about your own trauma, over and over and over again?

The process of moving a family into a house in Jackson could be...emotionally complicated. 

The reasons why a house could be vacated were numerous, and ran the gamut from wholesome and sincere to depressing. And sometimes, they reeked of futility, in a way that made Maria question the strength of her home.

Maria would never delude herself into thinking that Jackson was for everyone. The only fighting she was interested in doing now was for survival. Some folks clearly came here with ambitious, amorphous vengeance on their mind, as if Jackson could turn the tides against larger groups that were hundreds, or thousands, of miles away. 

And sometimes they left, despite Maria’s best efforts. It wasn’t her job to make that decision for them - if they had unfinished business out there in the world, that was up to them. They just couldn’t bring Jackson into it.

But Jackson would still be there to receive them. And at the very least, any remains they found and could identify were buried in the town cemetery. At the very least, they would always have a place to rest.

The snow that crunched under her boots pulled Maria from her strange reverie as she realized that Susan was waving to her, a box balanced against her hip. She shivered.

The early December storms were upon them, unpredictable and beguilingly beautiful. Winter reached its long tendrils down into Jackson - the novelty of the first snows had worn off, replaced by a long, monotonous limbo, thick and deep and cold. Maria thought of her patrols - shaking frost and ice from their limbs and cutting through the thick, dark wetness - and rubbed her arms through her coat.

“How’s the move going?”

Susan straightened up and shrugged, adjusting the scarf around her neck. “About as good as a move can go. Robin’s helping Dina out inside, I didn’t want to aggravate his back with all this lifting. Had a long shift at the greenhouses yesterday.”

Maria nodded. “I’m a little surprised she agreed to move so quickly.”

“We’ll miss having JJ around so often, but she needs her space,” Susan replied simply. 

Maria nodded. “This weather, though…” She raised her eyes to the clouds that crowded over them, high and thick. Susan smiled and nodded. She leaned back against the truck bed, clearly glad for an excuse to be stationary.

“Before...all of this…” Susan waved her hand absently and chuckled. “Robin and I moved from Texas to Colorado, after Robin got a teaching job in Boulder. We moved during the spring, and we thought it would be fine. Nope! Never saw snow in April like that.” Susan chuckled. “I think we had to dig our house out when we arrived. Not exactly a welcoming party.”

Maria smiled, shifting from foot to foot. “My daddy was from Florida. He used to fight with my momma all the time about the weather. She was from Chicago, and he thought she kept making up stories about snow drifts higher than cars and all that.”

Susan laughed, high and bright, and Maria just nodded and tried to pull herself back. 

Talking to residents who had been alive pre-Outbreak was always a strange exercise for Maria. She wanted, from time to time, to connect with someone who had been alive in that world - who knew its mechanics and priorities and status quo, who saw how different everything was now. But another part of her knew it was a useless exercise, futile, too easy to get lost in. She couldn’t spend too much time there, or else she would never come back.

A door creaked in the distance and Maria watched Robin step onto the porch, zipping up a jacket.

“We’ll see you later?”

Maria inclined her head. “Of course.” 

She bade Susan goodbye, and watched her link up with Robin and stroll down the snow packed road. Transplants from an old world, like her, worn into this new one - remade and repurposed into their community. 

It felt strange to acknowledge that, really, there was nothing new here. There was just something remade, over and over and over again, as a new world struggled to find its feet. Maria wondered if it was like the ocean eroding away the shore - slow in the present, but presenting a completely altered landscape in a hundred or a thousand years. 

Then the porch creaked, and there was Dina - hair up, illuminated in the setting sun, watching her.

Maria waved cursorily. “Just wanted to come see how the move was going,” she called out, making to turn around and leave. There was no use in crowding her when she had just moved.

But crunching footsteps came up behind her, and then -

“Wait, Maria.”

Maria stopped and let Dina come to her, watching her fiddle with the wash rag she was holding. Dina watched her feet as she approached, eyes darting off to the side. She finally lifted her gaze to Maria’s, shifting back and forth on her feet, clearly chewing over her words.

“I’m sorry about the other day. Er, the other week…I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that.”

Maria slipped her hands into her coat pockets. “Thank you for that,” she replied softly. 

“And then I got wrapped up with this move, and the weather was awful, and...do you want tea? You’re welcome to come in -” Dina gestured back at the house. 

A white flag, a gesture of care.

Maria replied - “That’d be nice, Dina, thank you” - and watched a smile flit across Dina’s face and then die.

Boxes and furniture cluttered the ground floor, waiting to be arranged and settled into the living space. Dina’s hair was tangled and her clothes were slightly rumpled, but she moved through the space with ease and possessiveness. It was already hers, and that fact made Maria smile internally.

Maria shrugged off her jacket and noted a few boxes still stacked in the living room as she entered, as Dina dug through one, rag thrown over her shoulder. “I just moved down the street, you’d think I would have remembered where I put things - here we go.” She hefted a steel kettle, an old archaic thing, over to the sink.

“Where did you get that?”

“Traded for it when we - when I got back from Seattle.” 

Maria nodded simply. She meandered into the kitchen, studying the cabinets and the tiled countertops, before leaning her elbows on the kitchen island. The counters were stacked with staples, bags of flour and sugar and potatoes. A fireplace, burned down the last embers, was glowing across the hall, throwing the last vestiges of warmth out into the newly occupied space.

“Do you like this place?”

“Didn’t have much of a choice, did we?” Dina chided, turning from where she had placed the kettle on the stovetop. 

“Strong words for the town proprietor,” Maria responded, eyebrows raised. Dina scoffed and waved her away.

“It’s wonderful, Maria, really. I know JJ will love the yard when he’s older, and maybe we can put a swing up in that tree one day.”

“Pretty expansive yard, yeah,” Maria replied absently, nodding. The kettle bubbled quietly, and Dina lapsed into silence, eyes far away. Maria pressed on, pulling her along.

“How is JJ adjusting?”

Dina leaned against the sink, arms crossed. “He’s doing fine. A lot of change in a short amount of time.”

“Yeah.” It was more explanation than Maria expected.

“But now we’re settled, so...I hope it stays that way.” Dina spread her arms weakly, as if she didn’t believe her own words. Maria just nodded.

“I’m sure Susan was complaining about the hell we rained down on her house?”

“Absolutely not,” Maria said, smiling. “From you and that angel of a child?”

“That angel of a child who screamed his head off for a week straight when we moved in,” Dina replied with a chuckle. But she immediately walked herself back - “No, no, he’s perfect, and Robin and Susan are perfect, and…” Dina drew a deep sigh, gaze far away, and then came back to herself. “How’s the winter treating us?”

“Could be worse. Foodstuffs are alright, but I’m concerned about medical supplies. We couldn’t get enough from traders before the snows got really bad.”

“If you want me to pick up any shifts at the clinic, I’m happy to,” said Dina firmly, but Maria waved her off. 

“We’ve got enough help, but thank you.”

They sat in silence for a few more minutes, as the dying fire crackled behind them. Dina studied her mug. Maria felt the conversation out, looking for a place she could press without pushing Dina too far. Dina had invited her in, after all - it seemed only courteous to continue opening these doors. 

“My momma had an island just like this in her kitchen,” Maria said, tapping the faux marble surface.

“Did she now?”

“Real marble though. Harder to take care off.”

Dina smiled, resting her hands on the island. “I guess I’ll take what I can get.”

It wasn’t long before the kettle whistled, practically rocking, and Dina pulled a small box from the cabinet above the stove. “Is chamomile alright?” At Maria’s nod, Dina chuckled. “Great, because that’s the only kind I have.” The words curled with her smile, as she tipped the kettle to fill a jade mug.

Maria accepted her tea with murmured thanks. “Can I have a spoon?”

“Uh, sure? Might take a second to find it…” Dina trailed off, walking towards a box set on one of the countertops and rifling through it with clinks and clutters.

“I just like to stir it when it’s cooling.”

Maria’s brother would always jab at her for her tea drinking habits, but after one-too-many times burning her tongue on scalding water, Maria decided not to take her chances. She didn’t know how her mother seemed to just drink straight from a fresh cup without doing something, anything, to mitigate the discomfort. Maria set the thought aside as she pushed the teabag down with her spoon, watching it dip and rise. She did it again - dip, rise. Dip, rise.

“Can I ask you something?”

Maria let her spoon go still in her mug. “Of course.”

“How did you...how…” Dina broke off, searching for her words. Her face was tight, the corners of her mouth pulled back slightly. Her mug sat in front of her, still empty and untouched. Maria waited. 

“When I...when we came back with Tommy...how did you…” Dina took a deep, shaking breath and pinched the bridge of her nose. Her bangs fell into her face, and she brushed them away.

Maria decided to offer a little structure. “How did I decide to separate from him?” But Dina shook her head. Her hands, resting on the island, shook minutely.

“How do you...how do you live without him?”

Maria stared into her mug.

“I’m sorry, that’s too…too much...”

“No,” Maria said, earnest. “No, it’s fine, really.”

Dina sucked down a breath and held it, holding her hands in front of her. They vibrated, and she seemed to steel herself.

“Maria...I don’t want you to think I only asked you here just so...just so I could put my pain on you.” Dina drew her arms closer to her body, encircling her torso. Her gaze dropped to her mug. “I thought...you’re the only person I know who could understand.” Her voice was high and tight, now, scratchy. And Maria looked and saw the pain in Dina’s wide eyes, in the wrinkle between her brows. She was a mirror, and not.

Words crowded up behind Maria’s throat, and she took a deep breath, trying to reorganize her thoughts into coherence.

“I can’t tell you what to do,” Maria murmured, and she watched Dina’s face tighten again. 

“I figured,” Dina muttered, watery, voice cracking.

“But I can tell you that...that you have a choice.”

But Dina shook her head, groggily, and Maria knew that she was already reaching some point of resistance, something that Dina didn’t believe. A tear traveled down her cheek.

It was a place Maria knew well, where she had resisted for a long time because, God, it hurt. It was like pulling at something out that had grown into you, that had become a very piece of you - you didn’t know what life was without it there. It had changed you and wound into you and was all that you knew because it was _part_ of you now.

“I see her everywhere,” Dina whispered. “Everywhere, every time I go into town...I can’t...I don’t _understand_ , Maria -” and her voice pitched up - “I don’t _understand_ why she did this to me, to our family, I don’t understand _how_ -”

Dina was crying openly now, tears dripping from her cheeks onto the island. The tightness in her mouth pulled back into a grimace as her words failed, and she swallowed hard.

“Sometimes we just don’t know,” Maria murmured in reply. “Sometimes it just doesn’t make sense.”

“But it _should_ make sense,” Dina retaliated, anger rising in her voice. “It _should_ , we had a _family_ , I _loved_ her, that should have been _enough_ -” and Dina stopped herself, gasping, brown eyes fiery. She clenched her shaking hands into fists, and her trembling traveled up to her shoulders. 

Maria swallowed, looked down at her forgotten tea, and back up again. “We can’t be everything to everyone, Dina,” she said quietly. “You gave what you could, and...and you couldn’t change what she thought she wanted.”

This seemed to strike Dina at her core, and she inhaled shakily as if she couldn’t draw breath. She unclenched her fists and gripped the not-marble, knuckles whitening.

“I thought I _knew_ who she was,” Dina gasped. “I thought if I tried hard enough, if I loved her hard enough, she would _stay_ …”

“Sometimes there’s nothing we can do,” Maria said quietly. “Sometimes we do all we can, and it isn’t enough. And that’s not your failure.”

“She thought it was _easy_ for me. I just...I wanted JJ to remember Jesse, I wanted her to be at peace, I wanted _us_ to be...to be _happy_...God, did I drive her away?” Something like pain and horror dawned on Dina’s face, twisting there and converging outwards in anger as she threw her hands into the air.

“And now she’s just out there, going about her life, doing so much shit - how _dare_ she come back, how _dare_ she just come back to _my_ home and _my_ baby and make this place a living _hell_ -”

She stopped herself, pinching the bridge of her nose again, breathing shakily. Maria stayed silent, waiting it out, and Dina pushed on desperately -

“Fuck, I’m sorry Maria, I didn’t mean that -”

But Maria raised a hand. “I can do my best to make sure that this place is as good for as many people as possible. But I can't succeed at everything. It’s okay.” She let her hand drop and waited for Dina to continue, watching her cross her arms again - a vibrating, burning coil.

“I keep trying...thinking of what I could have done to make her stay…”

“I don’t think you could have done anything.” 

Maria tried to inject as much gentleness into her words as possible, but it didn’t stop Dina’s brows from furrowing and her mouth turning downward and her head dropping into her hands again. She inhaled shakily and pressed her palms down against the island, finally meeting Maria’s gaze. 

“Tell me what to do,” Dina said, eyes wide, bequeathing. And Maria saw pain there, and desperation - to be rid of it, to wash herself of it.

“I can’t, Dina. I’m sorry.”

Dina’s eyes were dark, wet pools. “I...this…” She swallowed hard, raised her hands as if giving up. “I’ve never felt this before. I don’t know what to do.”

No, no, of course she had never felt this before - flighty, wild Dina, who could slide in and out of relationships easier than anyone, who played detachment like her trump card, who moved among Jackson with the ease and lightness that only came with utter self-possession and a complete lack of _need_ for others - Dina, who had been irrevocably _changed_...

Maria leaned forward onto her elbows. 

“I can do one thing,” she said softly, meeting Dina’s gazed as she raised it. Maria mulled over her next words, choosing them with care. Finally: 

“I can give you permission. It’s okay to let her go.”

And Dina’s voice broke on her next words. 

“What if she _needs_ me?”

And there it was, perhaps the hardest part of it all - to see your role with a person, so clear and so natural, doing absolutely everything in your power to love and lift them, until it was part of your reason for living - 

And then to step back and say: _this is not who I am anymore_.

Maria steeled herself. “Look, my husband came back from Seattle with a bullethole in his skull. And then I watched him turn into someone I didn’t know. Someone who I...couldn’t be with anymore.” Maria inhaled. “If this community wasn’t able to take care of him without me having to step in...then I’ve failed at the one good thing I’ve tried to do in this world.”

When Dina stayed in her hiccuping silence, Maria pressed on. “We’ll catch her, Dina. Trust me. You have to take care of yourself first.”

Tears slipped down Dina’s cheeks. “I thought I knew who she was. I thought we could be a family. I wanted it so...so _badly_...” Maria ran an index finger along the rim of her mug, as Dina repeated the vestiges of her pain, voice cracking. 

“I don’t want to feel like this anymore. I don’t want to feel like I...need to chase after her, like I have to know what she’s doing or else she’ll die, or else _I'll_ die…but I _can’t_ stop, and I don’t know _why_.”

The mirror was becoming all the more clear, and Maria grasped for something tangible to hold onto, for her purpose. “We built this community for a reason, Dina. Let someone else do the hard work. Let her lean on us. Let yourself be the most important person in your life. You know how to do this.”

Something seemed to quiet in Dina then, some small resolution sliding into place that softened the anger between her brows. They smoothed over and left raw, open pain in their wake, and Dina’s voice cracked when she spoke with new softness.

“I thought it was _real_.”

Maria’s heart twisted. “It was, Dina. I _promise_ it was. No one can take that away from you. Don’t let her take that away from you.”

She reached across the table and squeezed Dina’s hand. “You can do this, okay? I know you can.”

“Okay.”

“Take care of yourself, hon. Promise me that.”

Dina sighed and slowly composed herself, pulling the pieces back together. “Okay, okay. I promise.”

“Alright.” Maria withdrew, and studied her tea, undoubtedly now gone cool. “I’ve got an early morning tomorrow. Thanks for the tea.”

“I kept you so late, I’m sorry-” but Maria shook her head.

“Dina...if you need anything...remember that this is your home too. Please believe that.” And Dina nodded and followed Maria to the door, whispering her thanks again as she held it open. Maria offered the warmest smile she could muster.

And then she stepped outside, letting the front door gently close behind her. She took a deep, shaking breath, and felt it go into her body, down to her toes and fingers, and out again in a cloud. The biting air snuck under her collar and behind her ears. The rest of the world spun on, pulling her with it. 

Maria stepped off of the porch and let the sparkling, frigid darkness swallow her up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise that this is still a love story, y'all. But some parts of healing can hurt.
> 
> God, this chapter fought me. I wanted to write something a little shorter as I gear up for some heavy chapters ahead - and sure, this is shorter, but still heavy. Oops.
> 
> If you want a sample of the good stuff to come, check out my collection of oneshots that companions this story, [into orbit](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26551612/chapters/64724962)
> 
> Cheers, y'all!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back, friends! I continue to be so floored by the positive response to this story. As usual, big thanks to folks leaving kudos, bookmarks, comments, and even just reading this little stream-of-consciousness so-called story. Enjoy Chapter 10!

Springtime came to Jackson in flickering bursts of rain and color. The snows were stubborn, sticking to the mountainsides and creek trails well into late March and early April - but by the time they were into May, temperatures had risen to something that could chip away at winter’s icy grip and allow dormant life to burst forth. Cold gave way to spring’s mud season, as trickling streams broke through their icy cages. The sound of running water was like a trigger to Dina, to set aside some of winter’s worry and let the world spin on into its guarantee of new growth.

At the same time, JJ’s burgeoning capabilities burst forth with more and more alarming frequency. He was like a flower that bloomed with even a little attention - although Dina absolutely lavished him with it, and so he flourished. 

Her living room was a new landscape every day, with the amount of walking and running and climbing he did. He never seemed to tire of the static arrangement of her couch, the coffee table, the windows that looked out to the front porch, the book cases that were stacked with knick knacks. With trusty Ollie clutched at his side, every day in that house was a new one, with new things to learn - the name of this, the sound of that.

It was a new level of freneticism for which Dina had tried to prepare herself, but which still caught her unawares from time to time.

One particularly rainy spring day, JJ shot off like a rocket even as Dina warned him to slow down, with Ollie bouncing along in his fist - and then he must have slipped on the floor or on a rug because his legs went out from under him and he slid to the ground, in that clumsy, jarring way that toddlers did.

Dina was on him immediately as his cries filled the living room, checking him over for injuries, and beyond relieved when nothing came up bloody or bruised.

But JJ still cried as he held Ollie aloft, and Dina finally saw - one of the elephant’s cloth ears had been practically torn off. Some stuffing poked out beneath, threatening to fall even further to pieces if she didn’t do something about it.

“Oh, bubba,” she murmured as JJ brandished Ollie at her, but then made to pull the toy closer to his chest as she reached for it. “Momma will fix it, alright? I promise.” JJ’s scream of loss and confusion wrenched at her heart, even as she eased Ollie away from him and whispered promises that he’d come back.

He went down that night only after much worrying, and many abbreviated questions about where Ollie was, and sometimes just crying or screaming, as Dina patiently explained to him that he would be back soon, as good as new. And then Dina sat in her study, holding Ollie up to eye level.

She fingered the loose flap that had once been attached as his ear. What a soft, tiny, delicate thing he was, existing in this world. Ollie could only be a child’s plaything, could only exist in that place would he be nurtured and cared for in the way he deserved - even though it was still pretend. 

The tear surprised Dina. Ollie was a resilient little thing, not needing repair of any kind since Robin had brought him to their farmhouse in the spring months following JJ’s birth.

“Jesse’s?” Ellie had asked, as she cupped the nameless toy in her hands. Robin shook his head.

“Found it back when I was still doing patrols. Started collecting kid’s toys, bringing them back to town.”

“That’s sweet,” Dina murmured, plucking the toy from Ellie’s hands. “What do you think, JJ?” JJ just snoozed on, curled against her chest in his sling.

“I’m sure he’ll have thoughts on this later,” Dina said kindly to Robin, who just nodded.

“Well in case he doesn’t take kindly to dear old Ollie here, you’re welcome to see what else we’ve got at our place.” His smile was bright and kind and offering, and Dina watched Ellie’s mouth harden, just so.

“We’ll think about it,” Dina said to Robin with open kindness as she stood, free hand going to the small of Ellie’s back. “Thank you so much for coming by.” 

The screen door eased closed, and before the sounds of Robin’s footsteps had faded, they were drowned out by the sound of Ellie stalking up the stairs.

When Dina later prodded Ellie gently for her feelings on Robin’s gift, Ellie shrugged noncommittally. “It’s just a toy. Just as long as he doesn’t choke on it, we’re good, right?” But Dina watched Ellie stare out the window of their bedroom, tracing the pads of her fingertips with one hand. 

She left their bed earlier than usual that night, while Dina was still drifting off and conscious enough to feel the mattress shift and feel the solid heat leave her side cold. 

Dina sometimes wondered if Ellie so judiciously prowled the halls of their house each night to prove something to herself - that their farmhouse was as safe as Jackson, that they didn’t need to go back - just as much as she did so for security. That was how Dina found her, inspecting the latches on the downstairs windows that faced towards the porch.

“What’s wrong, baby?” Dina murmured, voice scratchy with sleep, although she knew Ellie would keep her answers to herself tonight. When Ellie offered something generic and cursory in reply, Dina just stepped closer and brushed Ellie’s hair out of her face.

“You know Robin didn’t mean anything by it. It’s just a toy.” Dina touched Ellie’s cheek, placating, reaching forward with softness. But something hardened in between Ellie’s brows in that moment.

“I know it’s just a fucking _toy_ , Dina.” 

Ellie’s sharp reply was a spark to Dina’s gut, and she froze, as the crest of Ellie’s anger reared in front of her.

“Excuse me?”

Immediately, Ellie’s gaze was down and drawn, her mouth in a tight, thin line. She scrubbed at her eyes with her shirtsleeve as Dina stepped back carefully.

“I just need to sleep,” Ellie muttered dismissively, the zenith of whatever anger she had felt now passing. “Let’s just go back to bed.”

“So we’re going to talk about it tomorrow, right?”

Dina’s tone was presumptive, but she couldn’t help herself - she couldn’t help her persistent desire for real _answers_.

“Fine,” Ellie muttered under her breath. “Just stop cornering me.” And Dina watched her hunched form ascend the stairs, as shame and frustration and sadness curled in her gut. Their thread of conversation ended that night, like so many others - left in a tangled knot that Dina both desperately wanted to grip and was too afraid to touch.

Ellie apologized the next morning, a whispered thing over a mug of tea that steamed into both of their faces. Dina accepted it with a kiss and returned it with an apology of her own, for her quickness, her rashness, her demands. 

But it didn’t feel like enough. For a second, they had gripped the crux of issue at hand - and then had let it fall. Dina felt it go out of her fingertips, felt the exact moment when she could reach out and grasp it - and she did nothing. They floated on, neutral and unchanging in their system - and thus, Dina saw now, they floated further and further into oblivion. The days ticked down and down and down...

Dina struggled to pinpoint if it was fear or reluctance that made them so incapable of tackling these things. All she knew was that they could never quite sync up in how they prioritized things, and they were too comfortable in their cozy stasis. The comfort was beguiling, a predator’s camouflage, putting them in danger rather than protecting them. 

Isn’t this what she had wanted? Everything perfect, on the surface. Idyllic home and family, away from everyone - her childhood dream fully realized. Here it was, and here it was not - a shell on top of a deep, rotting, dying thing. 

Dina sat Ollie back down on her desk and thought about infection, and rancor, and how sometimes one had to cut through healthy-seeming flesh to fully unearth the infection beneath. She thought about the shell of the world, consumed by the virus, and wondered if that was the truth finally showing its face.

* * *

The world would not stop for anyone, so Jackson made sure to stop what parts it could, to make space and time in places where they had been abandoned in place of survival. This was not to encourage stasis but rather to slow down, to let folks breathe and absorb what was around them and enjoy it all. The end of the world would tick on, whether they liked it or not - it was the least they could do to preserve some kind of normalcy, some kind of reprieve. 

Dina had to wonder how many of these festivals had actual roots in real, old world holidays - and how many were made up in this time as an excuse to engender ease and joy among the populace as often as possible. Food-driven ease and joy, of course. Dina was rapidly learning that any gathering, no matter how small, could be made food-driven.

“Yeah, so apparently, these really were a thing in the old world, at least according to my mom,” Astrid said as she pulled her hair up into its high ponytail. “All the restaurants would let people sample things from their menus, and it was just like a big gathering or a festival or something.”

Dina meandered beside her, trying to keep her mind on the present. Her worry was cut through by an image of throngs of people waiting in lines for tiny triangles of sandwiches displayed on platters. The thought sat bright and heavy in the forefront of her mind - to the point that she remarked to Astrid about it, who chuckled in response - before settling back into her anxiety. Dina never left her new home without some measure of worry.

Susan had to be some kind of psychic, to pick up on her anxieties. Or maybe all parents shared this proclivity. Regardless, she approached Dina that afternoon - an afternoon where Dina knew she looked particularly harried, and JJ had been difficult to get down for his nap, still pressing her about Ollie in his limited vocabulary. The words he knew now expanded out to include “mine” and “where” and “ouch”, a phenomenon that made Dina’s heart twist.

Dina had tried to wave Susan away - but she was persistent, as much as Jesse if not more. She wondered if JJ would inherit the same stubbornness. 

“Dina, let me watch him for one afternoon. Go and enjoy your day.”

Dina frowned, sighed, and tried to remember her promise to herself to accept help. Sometimes, inexplicably, she preferred to wallow in the evidence of her own failings than let them be lifted off of her. It wasn’t just that she missed JJ, her own flesh and blood - it was that she still felt like she needed constant validation that she was doing the right thing as a parent, in an impossible role in this impossible world. 

“Thanks, Susan,” Dina replied. “I’ll be back in a few hours?”

So here she was, meandering down the softly-lit street as folks slowly prepared different foods and drinks for residents to sample as they wandered by. The evening settled around them, still shaking off some of winter’s chill, and Dina hugged her jacket closer to herself and watched children scamper through the streets. Someone had gone to the trouble of stringing up lights at various intervals, and Dina followed their meandering paths with her eyes - anything to keep her eyes trained above the heads of the crowd.

Music drifted along the crowd, something born on delicate strings and twangs of a guitar, and Dina swayed and hummed and let a small smile come to her face. Up ahead, Astrid and Cat had stopped at a table and were now discussing something energetically, with Astrid waving her hands decisively in front of her. Snatches of their conversation drifted back to Dina -

“...tomatoes aren’t even in season.” 

“Yeah, they’re _totally_ in season-” 

“That’s what greenhouses are for-” 

“When was the last time you did a greenhouse rotation, three years ago?” 

“Yeah and my vegetable knowledge is way better than yours-”

A third voice cut in - “Just don’t get her started on whether tomatoes are a fruit-”

“Wow, why didn’t I hang out with y’all before?” Dina said, sarcasm dripping from her words as she approached. Astrid just rolled her eyes, but Cat turned and held something on a napkin right under Dina’s nose. Dina balked slightly.

“Alice is experimenting again,” Cat said, in a tone that begged Dina for her patience, “and would _love_ if you tried this...uh…” She leaned back over the table and raised her voice over the pleasant, bucolic din. “What is this again babe?”

“ _That_ ,” said Alice with a spin and a flourish, as she set down some small platter in front of herself, “is a fried green tomato.”

“A _what_?” Dina shot back, and Cat chuckled, still holding the specimen aloft.

“It’s delicious, if she can be trusted. Which she can!” Cat added swiftly. “She hasn’t poisoned me yet.”

“Small victories,” Dina muttered as she took the offered food. “I usually don’t fry my vegetables, so this’ll be an experience.”

Alice piped up immediately - “Actually, tomatoes are a fruit-” while Astrid chuckled behind her hand - “Oh, here we go…” 

Dina ignored them, biting into the cornmeal crust and meeting the thick, caramelized tomato beneath. “Oh, wait, this is _good_ -” 

Alice reacted with exuberance, high-fiving Cat and whooping, and Dina chuckled in response and wiped crumbs from the side of her mouth as she swallowed. “She’s not lying,” she said to Astrid, leaning over and nudging her. 

“Won’t it be soggy?”

“Nah, come on, Astrid, I’ll show you-”

As Astrid leaned over the table to watch Alice work, Cat sidled up to Dina, arms crossed casually.

“Told you she wouldn’t kill you.”

Dina scoffed - “That was never a concern, for the record” - and Cat just tittered. 

“How are you?” Cat supplied, and Dina wondered if it was out of obligation or genuine concern, but she raised her eyes to Cat’s open face as she rocked back and forth on her heels. Dina shrugged noncommittally.

“Just ate a fried vegetable - oh, sorry, _fruit_ \- and loved it, so I’m pretty sure my entire worldview’s been irrevocably altered.”

Cat scoffed and rolled her eyes and Dina chuckled back, trying to ignore the twinged in her gut at her deflection. She swallowed and tried to continue.

“JJ’s running around, so my house regularly looks like a hurricane went through it.”

Cat nodded sagely. “Our house looks like that _without_ a toddler running through it-” and then Alice’s voice went up, again over the cozy din and the sparse crowds that pressed around them.

“I keep telling you to clean up after your art projects, but do you listen? _Noooooo_ …” She leaned backwards dramatically so that the long curtain of her red hair fell in waves behind her. 

Cat waved Alice away with a chuckle, and the redhead trailed away with a smile and continued to ply Astrid with her food. Astrid was considering the platter in front of her with great detail and care, a look of immense concentration on her face.

Cat sighed - “She’s got a point” - before turning back to Dina, who braced herself for that awkward obligation of conversation to pick up again. But Cat, to her credit, didn’t say anything - just leaned back on her elbows and hummed to the music that floated over the crowd. 

“How have you been?” Dina tried.

Cat shrugged - “Surviving” - and Dina rolled her eyes.

“ _Other_ than that,” she pressed on. She and Cat weren’t close. Maybe now was as good a time as ever to change that.

“You know…” Cat sighed and tucked a lock of black hair behind her ear. “My mom’s not doing great.” She raised her eyes to the sky, and Dina’s brows knit together.

“I’m sorry.”

Cat shrugged - “She’s old, older than we both thought she’d get. It’s definitely the...preferred way to go.”

Dina nodded. “It’s awful, though. If there’s anything I can do…”

“Thanks,” Cat nodded. She faded into silence, and then a smile curled around her face as she looked back up at Dina. “Just don’t ask me to tattoo an entire sleeve of animals wearing party hats. I might just have nightmares for weeks.”

“You have the weirdest clients,” Dina chuckled. “If I ever ask for a tattoo from you, I promise it’ll be the easiest thing in the world.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Cat replied, right as Astrid piped up from across the table. 

“Whoa, guys, did you try Bren’s hot sauce on these tomatoes? I think I’m losing my mind over here-”

Astrid suddenly coughed violently, and Alice slapped her on the back. “Please don’t die on us, I _really_ don’t want Josie coming down on me again,” Cat said, producing a glass of water from somewhere on the table.

Once it was clear that Astrid was not going to asphyxiate, Dina tried a second fried tomato, drizzled with a deep red sauce. “Weak,” Dina grinned as she chewed, letting the heat tickle her mouth and throat in a way she hadn’t felt in ages.

“Not all of us are from the American southwest,” Astrid jabbed, tears leaking from her the corners of her eyes.

“No, you should be so lucky,” Dina said, and Astrid rolled her eyes.

“My sister _loved_ hot sauce,” Dina continued, smiling. “No one had a tolerance like Talia. I don’t think she was ever truly satisfied by Jackson’s offerings…” She let her tone get facetiously wistful and grinned as Astrid chuckled.

“Well…” Astrid wiped her face with a napkin in finality. “I gotta head back - early patrol tomorrow.” She stood and raised a hand in farewell. “Hey, Dina, when are you gonna join us again?”

Dina shrugged, glancing down at her shoes. Heat still coated her tongue. “I was gonna talk to Maria...I might help her organize some patrols?”

“Some of those safehouses are looking pretty shaky,” Astrid added. “Could use a savvy electrician if you’re up for it.”

“We’ll see if I’m ever ‘savvy’ at that again,” Dina replied. Astrid just raised her eyebrows, and Dina walked herself back. “Okay, okay, I’ll think about it.”

The idea continued to hang over her as the evening ticked on. She could get out of Jackson for a little bit, put what Eugene had taught her to good use. It made her heart twinge a little, that she hadn’t touched those skills in so long, that she had set them down and they had become dusty with disuse. 

Dina bade Alice and Cat goodnight and returned home just as the sun was settling behind the horizon. She sang to JJ as she cooked and he rocketed around the kitchen, newly toddler-proofed thanks to a few extra hours put in by Robin. She made up songs about carrots and potatoes - _one potato, two potatoes, three potatoes, four, five potatoes, six potatoes_ \- and JJ repeated the word “more” over and over and over again. He asked to be picked up and Dina caved, dancing with him around their kitchen to her aimless, made-up tune.

“My brilliant, brilliant Potato, yes,” she murmured against his hair as she tickled his sides and he guffawed.

It had been a long day for them both, and JJ went down after only two stories. Dina paused for a moment as he slept, running her hands lightly through his dark hair. Then she gently set the storybook on his bedside table and crept out of the room.

The basement was cool as she crept down, flicking the light on. She held her breath as new shadows darkened or illuminated in the light. She tried to actively remind herself that there was nothing down here with her - that the darkness was simply her mind playing tricks on her, and she could set down that vigilance. She was home.

Dina soon found what she was looking for - a box, nondescript except for the words _Dina, Personal_ scrawled on its side in marker. She set it in the center of the room and rifled through it, setting aside knick knacks and forgotten things, until - 

“Here we go…”

It was a damp, old notebook. She opened it and found a name inked on the inside cover - _Eugene Linden_. A newer addition was scrawled underneath in darker, comparatively fresh ink:

_Dina,_

_My eyesight’s going soon, so I figure you’ll make better use of this than I will. Happy goddamn birthday - I hope for many more for you._

Dina flipped delicately through the crinkled pages to find familiar schematics, diagrams, and notes in Eugene’s hand. Some were augmented with her at-the-time clumsy additions as well.

 _Look for the light, indeed_. Dina chuckled to herself. She perused until she was bone tired and her legs ached from the cold concrete of the floor, before dragging herself back upstairs. She set the notebook on her bedside table.

As she curled up in bed, Dina realized that she hadn’t thought about Ellie once all day.

* * *

Looking for help in Jackson was both easy and jarring. 

It was easy because there was so much help to be offered. And it was jarring for the same reason: because of how obvious it was that there were always others, waiting in the wings to give that help. The massive apprenticeship system meant that passing down knowledge became part of committing to anything in Jackson, whether it was music or art or hunting or welding. 

The unstated assumption was that knowledge had to be fluid and accessible because with the constant threats of infected, rogue travelers, and simple lack of consistent healthcare looming, they had to be prepared to substitute anyone at any time.

And that was how Dina found herself one weekend, striding down a sparsely populated street, wondering which tailor or leatherworker or seamstress she would see today - maybe Sharad, if his wife still didn’t need help with her new baby; or Jerry, probably swamped but always willing to take on a favor. The idea of working with needles in her house with a toddler running around didn’t appeal to Dina in the slightest, and in any case, she didn’t know how JJ would react if he saw her running his best friend through with sharp objects.

Dina turned a corner, trying to remember the last time she had seen Jerry - a familiar exercise for her by now, to hold a name and face in her mind and run back through her memories to the last time she had seen them alive. A week ago? Two? Maybe-

And then, from somewhere on her right, Dina heard crying.

Dina quieted her footsteps and turned her head, trying to locate the sound of muffled whimpers and cries. Her eyes settled on a figure sitting on the steps of a house down the road, hunched over, and Dina approached, and familiarity curled in her - 

“Ellie?”

She stopped a good six feet away, watching Ellie’s shoulders twitch as she raised her head and scrubbed at her face with her arm. Her hair was choppy and uneven, as if she had cut it herself recently, and her eyes were rimmed red and wide as they settled on her. 

“Dina, sorry, I...hi…”

It seemed to take a second for Ellie’s mouth to catch up with her brain. Maybe Dina should have kept going, finished her errand and gone home - but something kept pulling her in. The fact that Ellie was outside, in public - that in itself was strange.

“Is everything okay?” _What a stupid question_. 

Why was she doing this? Dina thought of the festival, when she had gone for hours without remembering the pain of Ellie leaving her. Hours of her own life. Her _own_. She kept one hand on that thought and stepped closer. Ellie seemed to shrink away slightly, and Dina stopped. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Another stupid question, and Dina was already chastising herself. Ellie took prying and circuitous, careful prodding - she responded to such direct questions with similarly indirect answers.

But, for once, Ellie didn’t deflect. She studied her shoes, scuffed one sole against the dirt. 

“It’s Joel.” Ellie’s voice was thick and heavy, and she took another deep, shaking breath. Dina took a few more steps towards her.

“I can’t...he…” Ellie inhaled again, face tightening, brows furrowed. She gazed at the ground in front of her like it was a thousand yards away.

“I wasted so much time.” Her voice quavered and broke and she folded in on herself again, shoulders shaking. Very delicately, Dina sat down next to her on the stoop. Ellie quivered, hands shoved into the pockets of her sweatshirt. A flush painted her cheeks and across the bridge of her nose, and Dina wondered how long she had been sitting out here, how many people she had waved away.

“I wasted so much _fucking_ time…” And her words trailed off into a high, scratchy sob as she shook her head aimlessly.

When Ellie breathed in again and lifted her head, Dina took a deep breath as well. The pain in Ellie’s face seemed to be etched down to her very bones, to her very being. It was thick and deep and clung.

“I messed up so much, Dina. So much, so much…” And though Ellie still didn’t look at Dina, there was something desperate in her tone, something that reached out. For now, Dina didn’t push back. 

Ellie looked down at the ground again and swallowed. “Before we came to Jackson…” She seemed to be searching for her words. “Joel was taking me to the Fireflies...that’s how we met.”

And just like that, they were well into a new, uncharted space. Dina tried to remind herself to breathe. 

“They were making a vaccine.” Ellie’s voice was soft, as if she was talking about something that wasn’t real, something sacred and abstract. Something shifted in Dina - whether it was shock or surprise, she couldn’t tell - at the fact that someone she had known for years could have had such a momentous role in all of this.

“They were gonna make a _cure_.” Ellie’s voice hitched upwards sharply and almost failed, as she was consumed by more tears. Her breaths became shallow and high and fast and she put her head between her knees and took great, gulping breaths and shook and cried. “I’m sorry,” she choked out. “I’m sorry, you can leave, I-”

“It’s okay.”

Ellie’s gasps and coughs slowly faded to a slower cadence, and she wiped her face with her sleeve. She took another shuddering breath.

“They had to kill me to make the cure. And Joel...Joel...he...”

And Ellie’s shoulders shook, as shock washed over Dina, at the knowledge of what had happened. Even in the broad brush strokes that Ellie had painted, it took shape. It wasn’t enough to understand everything, not even close, but it was a start.

Ellie sighed and raised her head, watching some of Jackson’s residents move across the street, chattering. Dina followed her gaze and watched children splashing in rain puddles, friends pulling each other along by their shoulders, a young man leaning down to scratch a dog behind an ear.

“There could have been a cure, Dina. _None_ of this would have happened.” And Ellie spoke with pure conviction and Dina’s heart twisted. Dina knew this, this finality, this convincement. Pushing back was the last thing she could do here.

Dina swallowed. She had to tread carefully, for both of them. Some part of her anger still simmered and twisted in her. But she had her home, her life, her family, and she had to remind herself again that no one - not even Ellie - could take that away from her.

“If you had died for that cure, we’d still be fighting the virus,” Dina replied with care. “But...I think a lot of folks here would lose someone pretty important to them.”

Ellie swallowed and continued to stare at the dirt between her feet. There was no agreement in her, no assent.

“Folks would miss the puns too.”

Ellie scoffed. Dina felt a twinge of annoyance at herself for responding with humor to all of Ellie’s pain.

“If you say so,” Ellie replied flatly, keeping her eyes fixed between her feet. She cleared her throat. “How...how is JJ?” Her voice was still thick, and she didn’t look up at Dina as she spoke.

“Dealing with some problems of his own…” And she fished the damaged Ollie out of his pocket.

Ellie raised her gaze in question, eyes widening as she saw the toy in Dina’s hands. “Oh, poor buddy,” Ellie murmured. “Can I…” She reached out with her right hand, leaning over slightly.

“Yeah,” Dina replied. Ellie turned Ollie this way and that, studying the torn ear in her deft hands.

“I can fix this,” Ellie said. Her voice was even and confident. 

“Are you sure-”

Dina was well aware that they were leaving the arena of their previous conversation at a decent clip, perhaps too fast, and anxiety climbed in her throat.

“Come on, I’m not _terrible_ at leatherwork. I can manage a couple of stitches. And I’d do it faster than Jerry, he’s always swamped this time of year anyways...”

It struck Dina, how Ellie settled into this pragmatism - as if this was something that Ellie had been waiting for, some reprieve. 

“I’m not just saying this because... because…” Ellie let the thought hang there. “I mean it, Dina.”

“Alright,” Dina sighed. She clapped her hands onto her thighs in finality and stood. “Just know that if you mess up, you’ll have a very upset one-year old on your hands.”

“Don’t you mean on your hands?”

Dina smiled and let the question hang.

Later that evening, as she set down the third story for the night, JJ - despite his eyelids drooping minutes earlier - perked up, eyes as wide as saucers: “Ollie?”

Sometimes, the half-approximation of the name sounded too close to _Ellie_.

“Someone’s fixing him,” Dina explained evenly. “A friend who loves him very much.” She didn’t know how much JJ understood, but at least he drifted off then, settling back under his blankets. 

She hoped she could keep this promise. She hoped Ellie would keep hers.

* * *

The crux of spring descended upon Jackson in blankets of inclement weather and bright, windy days. Thunderstorms rolled over them at night, and sometimes JJ cried in his room until Dina let him join her in her bed. She watched the rain cut over the glass, and distort the flashes of lightning that arced across the sky. 

She would drift off for a few hours and wake to find the clouds had rolled past them, and weak sunshine was illuminating the sky in the early morning. JJ blinked blearily next to her, the fear of the previous night forgotten in favor of what it had left behind. 

The road outside their house was pockmarked with dips and cracks, leftover from the cyclic melts and freezes of the winter. They filled with rainwater and JJ splashed through them exuberantly, a wide smile on his face and laughter bubbling up from his mouth.

Dina watched her reflection ripple and distort and slowly come back together. If she squinted her eyes slightly, she could almost see Talia, sans glasses. JJ leapt from puddle to puddle, agile for his age, even as Dina strolled after him energetically and tucked his hand into hers. The rains and rain clouds made everything seem infinite, unending, like they would be like this forever. Then the sun would peek through the clouds and the spell would be broken, and time would be upon them again. 

If JJ was wild and untameable in her house, he was the complete opposite in the barn - quiet, curious, waiting as much as a toddler his age could. He fisted his hands in the horses’ manes and giggled as they lipped at his clothes and his hair. He babbled at Dina and tried to follow her as best he could as she introduced him to Japan, waving his fists in front of the bay mare’s nose clumsily. Dina quieted his movements so that Japan breathed against his palms, and he giggled. 

“Pan,” JJ said. “Pan, pan, pan,” he repeated, clapping his hands, and Dina giggled. 

“Gotta get that boy on a horse soon,” Dan supplied as he staggered on by, pitchfork held over his shoulder to offset his uneven gait.

“Don’t go putting ideas in his head!” Dina shot back. “I’ll never hear the end of it.” And it was likely that she wouldn’t, but still, it made Dina’s heart flutter with happiness at the thought of JJ learning how to ride.

On the walk home, Dina saw crocuses starting to push their way through the muddy, chewed-up ground - still too early to have color, but exciting nonetheless. She pointed them out to JJ, who cooed and babbled half-formed names of colors as they walked together. 

He seemed particularly fixated on the color blue, and continued to murmur it in its half-approximation - “boo, boo, boo” - even as she tucked him into bed with a story. “In a few months, JJ,” she said, watching his eyelids drift closed as sleep started to wash over him. “You’ll see bluer skies than you’ve ever seen, I promise.” And he giggled at her promise of the depth of summer, and Dina felt content in the knowledge that this could be guaranteed. 

Downstairs, Dina started embroidering a bright blue flower, although she had incomplete projects set aside already. The mountainous horizon that Astrid had requested was almost finished, as soon as she could find deep green thread to flesh out the forests in the foreground. She would have to talk to Cat, surreptitiously, to see if she could have some orange thread - Alice seemed to have a monopoly on it, which was problematic when Dina was trying to surprise her with a sunset over a desert landscape.

Their days wore on with contentment. One afternoon, Dina invited Astrid over so she could borrow some flour, and raised her eyebrows when Astrid produced a camera.

“My brother found it out on patrol,” she said, handling the machinery delicately. “Mind if I take her for a spin?” She gestured aimlessly around the kitchen.

“By all means,” Dina chuckled.

At that moment, JJ wove through the kitchen, fast as his little legs could carry him. “Woo, look at you go, buddy!” Astrid called, snapping a few shots as JJ giggled, weaving around her. Dina played with the hem of her shirt as she watched Astrid trot after JJ and JJ weave and laugh. 

“The light in the living room is good!” she finally butt in, suppressing a small smile as she heard Astrid make her way in that direction. JJ was in tow, his socked feet plodding along on the hardwood. 

Dina had traded for a set of frames with some travelers who had come through the previous month, and now she filled them happily, scrawling the month and year on the back of each newly-developed photo before sliding them in. Dina had to resist the urge to ask Astrid to take photos all the time, to document every second of their happiness. She made do by placing framed pictures all over the house, so she never had to walk more than a few feet without seeing another little framed piece of joy.

How immensely, incredibly lucky she was - that she could be so close to something that memorialized her life so easily.

The thought continued to consume Dina as she left the town meeting that evening, JJ in her arms as she watched the crowd part around her. Chatter drifted around her, light and airy and positive. Spring had that effect - everything was more buoyant, everything sloughed off a little easier. Dina waved to Robin, who was up ahead - she then cut through the crowd on a diagonal, approaching where Maria was talking with a few huddled newcomers who Dina didn’t recognize.

She paused outside of the vicinity of their conversation and waited until Maria waved them away with a smile. They set off down the road, staying clumped together. Maria lifted her gaze from her clipboard at the sound of her name, and smiled as Dina set JJ down.

“Hey there, young man.” Maria knelt and JJ toddled to her, arms out as he almost ran squarely into her knee. Dina straightened him out, laughing under her breath.

“Can you say hi to Aunt Maria, JJ?”

Maria scoffed. “Aunt? I’m old enough to be his grandmother.”

Dina chuckled and watched JJ grip one of Maria’s fingers in his still-small grasp, nonsense words streaming from his mouth. Maria listened, rapt at attention, her gaze as serious as it was when she was leading meetings. Dina approached as he turned back to her, a hand on his shoulder to steady him.

“I wanted to talk to you about something,” she said, as Maria stood.

“Mm?”

Dina tucked JJ’s hand into her own, using the excuse to gather herself.

“Astrid mentioned to me that some of the safehouses need some work done?”

If Maria was surprised, she didn’t show it beyond her eyebrows raising minutely. “I was gonna have one of Wes’s apprentices go up and take care of it. But if you’re interested, I trust that you’ll do a good job. Probably a better one, to be fair.” A small smirk curled across Maria’s mouth.

Dina nodded. Despite her initiative, she waffled now. She knew she would - everything was now confounded by her obligation to her son and her desire for some semblance of normalcy in her life. But still, she had asked, and that was something. More than something. And Maria, to her credit, noted her silence. 

“Think about it,” Maria replied. “I won’t make you do anything. You and that son of yours are your first priority.”

Dina nodded and smiled, looking down at JJ. “Ready to go home, buddy?” JJ nodded vigorously, and Dina bent down to scoop him up again. She nodded to Maria and was walking away when a voice rose up behind her -

“You look good, Dina.”

Dina paused and looked back, and saw honesty in Maria’s expression - no pity, no obligation, just the genuine truth. She took a deep breath in through her nose and let the truth of her situation rise around her. She thought it would overwhelm her, but instead it just buoyed her along, in all its support and kindness. She smiled.

“I feel good.”

And it did feel good - to not hide. To not grasp for something that wasn’t there. To not pretend.  It felt good to  _ know _ .

* * *

The morning that Ellie left the farmhouse, Dina found the hamsa bracelet placed delicately on her bedside table. 

Just as Ellie leaving their bed had become habit, Dina’s waking and following her became habit by response. She would follow Ellie anywhere - in Jackson, in Seattle, into the own hell of her mind. What else was she meant to do with her love?

But that morning she knew, even as she crept downstairs. She knew that Ellie was going somewhere she couldn’t follow.

Now, she studied the bracelet in the dying afternoon light that illuminated her bedroom, painting it in a soft orange. It had traveled so far, only to be returned to her again, and again, each time with pain and heartbreak.

Dina buried her face in her hands.

She would not let this become a memorial to her pain. There was already too much written into her body and her mind, too much that she could not wash away. She would memorialize something precious with it, as it had always been meant to do. It would be steadfast, an anchor in the storm.

Dina had tucked the bracelet carefully into one of her drawers upon moving in. It felt disingenuous to wear it now. She didn’t know what possessed her to place it carefully into her jacket pocket when she went to pick up Ollie.

A family had moved into the expansive house that had been Joel’s, but Dina learned soon after her own return to Jackson that they had done Ellie the courtesy of leaving her little garage untouched. At first, Dina wanted to tell them that they were wasting their time, but now she was glad that they hadn’t. Going back here let her indulge in a few small, selfish memories of being fifteen and dragging Ellie out of bed, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, to hang out with her and Jesse. 

The lights in the house were on but the shades were closed, and shadows moved beyond them. For a second, Dina let herself wonder if seeing figures in the house again was like seeing ghosts for Ellie. She skirted the puddles that had formed in the yard and knocked firmly on the door.

The first time she had come to Ellie’s place was because Ellie had a television, and Dina’s and Talia’s place didn’t. There was this movie that Dina just  _ had _ to see - although for the life of her she couldn’t recall what it was - and that was how she found Ellie, framed in her doorway thin, and skittish. Dina had to pry to be let in. 

Ellie loosened up slightly during the movie, whooping and laughing with Dina, and Dina left with an awkward invitation to come back. Or rather, Dina explicitly said that she would return - and Ellie, stumbling, had agreed.

Now Dina held back, as the door opened and Ellie, tall and rumpled, filled the space between her door and the doorframe. 

Ellie was already digging through her pocket as Dina greeted her.

“Hey.”

“Good as new,” Ellie said, holding Ollie out in her palm. The casual phrase didn’t betray her low, restrained tone. There was a tiny, precise line of stitches along Ollie’s ear, next to where it had torn against his head.

“JJ will be so happy,” Dina said, beaming a bright smile that she couldn’t contain. She picked Ollie up and turned him over, running her fingers over the stitches. 

Ellie leaned against the doorframe, keeping her hands in the pockets of her sweatshirt. Dina kept up the excuse of looking Ollie over for as long as she could, but that wore out soon enough. Hanging over an awkward goodbye, Dina tried not to look too closely at Ellie’s face, and Ellie kept her gaze down, scuffing the floor with one sock-covered foot.

“Hey…” Dina didn’t know where the sudden need to be forward came from - just that without warning or preparation, she put herself onto a path that she knew she couldn’t take back. 

“I’ve been thinking more about...about what you said, last time we talked.” 

Ellie didn’t look up, but Dina watched her press her lips into a line. She took a deep breath, and her next words tumbled out of her mouth -

“What if you visited the farmhouse?”

Speaking it into existence seemed to throw it into a light that made Dina balk. The detail in which it shone was almost sickening, with all of the love and pain contained within it. It was like pulling at a splinter, and seeing how deep it went.

“I le-” she took a deep, shaking breath. “Joel’s things are still there. Maybe it could help you get...get closure.”

Even as Ellie continued to stare at the ground, Dina saw the line of her mouth curl down into a grimace, watched her inhale shakily through her nose. Dina immediately walked herself back - “You don’t have to, I can’t tell you how to do this...” But Ellie shook her head.

She raised her gaze to the sky, to something beyond them both - beyond Jackson, in some deep corner of the galaxy. Dina saw tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. Her words were shaky and caught in the back of her throat.

“I think I’m afraid to go back.”

Ellie swallowed hard and looked down again, and Dina wrapped her arms around herself - trying to stay grounded in the sheer magnitude of the thing they were facing, the things that had gone unspoken between them.

“If it were me, I think...I think I’d be afraid too.” 

Ellie swallowed again, nodding. Dina scuffed a boot against the ground, feeling the conversation out. “Especially because I have no idea if the guys locked the gate properly last time they left, so who knows what’s living in there now.”

Her attempt at humor felt weak and shallow at best, but a smile flickered across Ellie’s face all the same, and that gave Dina a crumb of satisfaction. She took a deep, deep breath, all the way down to her toes. She placed Ollie in her jacket pocket and felt around with her fingers, steeling herself all the while.

“Well, for whatever you do next...”

She held out her hand, palm up - and there was the bracelet, almost black in the low light. Ellie stared down at it.

“For good luck, right?”

The words seemed to jolt Ellie out of a reverie. She looked up and her gaze met Dina’s, and Dina saw disbelief and relief warring there. Ellie blinked rapidly, finding her voice.

“Yeah...yeah…”

She swayed back and forth before reaching out with her right hand and gently, reverently lifting the bracelet. As it left her palm, Dina felt some small piece of her go with it, something that wanted to burrow into Ellie and stay there. 

“I...uh…Thank you, Dina,” she murmured. Her voice seemed far away, like she was dumbstruck.

“Of course,” Dina replied softly. She realized she was still holding her hand out and retracted it, rubbing the back of her neck. “I gotta get home. I’ll see you around?”

“Yeah…” Ellie murmured. “Yeah, you too.”

Dina turned on her heel, left the yard, and did not look back. Not as she left Joel’s house. Not as she walked down the street, feeling the evening rise up around her. She did not look back even when she was on the other side of the front door to her house, where she leaned for a moment, letting the day wash over her.

Dina didn’t quite know what she had done, except that some part of her had decided - had  _ chosen _ \- that somewhere in their long, tangled history, there were things that Ellie still deserved to know. That she deserved peace. That she deserved closure.

That Dina still loved her, even if it was the kind of love that showed itself with space, with walls, with the earnest murmuring that though their orbits were separate, their meeting was still inevitable, because that was where Dina had placed herself.

The creak of a floorboard alerted her to Susan’s presence, and she shook herself. 

“Thanks for watching him,” Dina said softly. “Mission accomplished.” She withdrew the repaired Ollie from her pocket, and Susan smiled. 

“The prodigal son returns,” she said as she pulled her scarf around her neck, and Dina chuckled. “JJ’s already down.”

Dina nodded, smiling appreciatively. “I’ve got more tea if you want any,” she said, gesturing towards her cupboard - but Susan shook her head, citing the caffeine and her early morning tomorrow. Dina walked Susan to the porch and waved as she left, watching her back disappear down the darkening road. 

She crept carefully into JJ’s room, to find him sprawled out on his bed, limbs akimbo and mouth open. Very gently, she set Ollie down onto the mattress next to him, so that the toy was propped up against JJ’s side, little beaded eyes glinting in the darkness.

The window next to JJ’s bed was cracked open, and a soft breeze drifted in. Dina drank in the fresh spring air, and as she crept out of the bedroom and down the hallway, she thought about rebirth, about flowers that bloomed at sites of the dead - about new life.

It always came back around. It always would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember those green, unripe tomatoes that Dina accidentally picked in [Chapter 7](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25553626/chapters/64147003)? They have a use after all.
> 
> Cheers, friends!


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter destroyed me. If there are any lingering typos, I'll fix them later. Cheers, y'all.

The painting taunted her. 

It sat on its easel, unfinished and unforgotten, a two-dimensional rendering of memories and processes that she longed to forget. It hadn’t started out that way, but it was now a permanent, awful testament to those things. That was how this worked.

It had started out as charcoal, not even on paper that was meant for it. But _fuck_ it - she hadn’t felt the soft give of charcoal under her hands in a long time, and after Cat mentioned trading for some for a splashing, vibrant watercolor tattoo (“Not really an equal trade, if you ask me”), Ellie had immediately asked to borrow some. 

She felt for some of the softer sticks and pressed it against the canvas in one sure motion. It was thick and brittle and smearing and dry, and she ghosted her fingertips over the streak she had created, watching it smudge. 

There was no image inside of her, just the urge for something tactile - and so Ellie let her arm do the work, flowing and streaking across the canvas. Something rounded and twisting took shape, something organic and liquid and heavy, and she discarded the softer sticks for the harder, darker ones to deepen shadows and fill out curves. 

_Chiaroscuro_ was what came to her as she studied it - a word she had encountered in a musty art book that Joel had traded for years ago. The presence of strong, deep contrasts as light fell across an object; the brightest brights and the darkest darks and the contours between them, jagged or soft. It felt like a deep, organic place from which to draw.

But it was still canvas not yet covered in paint, as all canvases are wont to be. And perhaps there was something there that _wanted_ to be colored, some tiny kernel that begged for recognition. 

So she smeared some reds and greys and blacks onto a palette, and turned up the volume on her very, very old Walkman, and let it take her to that creative place - that escape, where a paintbrush was just an extension of her body, and the canvas was just an extension of her mind, and she could be anywhere or do anything, and -

And all she tasted was iron, and all she felt was the floor beneath her, cold with death and hot with blood -

And Ellie wrenched her headphones off and stormed outside, slamming the door behind her. The air was cold as she sucked it down and paced and itched and panted and she rounded on that small, dark part of herself and snarled at it to _go the fuck away_.

It begged to come out, but she knew it was a damned thing. She had her therapist, she had her friends, and she wanted it to be over - and so she turned away. Perhaps it was doomed to be part of her, and that was that. She could coast along here, as she breathed heavily in the crisp, spring afternoon and tried to erase old images from her head. It was _fine_.

Ellie could hardly look at the canvas when she went back inside, angling her body away from it, and that fact stabbed deep like a knife.

She considered throwing it away in its entirety, thinking bitterly of something Cat had blithley mentioned to her years ago - “You shouldn’t make art where you fuck” - and she wondered if that aphorism extended beyond sex. 

Her art had lived in her, an embryonic thing waiting to flourish, an everlasting undercurrent that was always ready to sweep up whatever was in her life and splash it onto a canvas - whether that was the burning, deep reds and oranges of the sunsets at the farmhouse; or a deeply intricate graphite drawing of the old, twisted tree outside their front porch; or Dina, with newborn JJ pressed to her breast, floating in an amorphous blue that spread her long, dark hair behind her in waves…

But now it was tainted. Everything tasted of iron, everything was tinged in blood, awash in that indelible stain of memory.

And so the canvas taunted her, an ubiquitous reminder of the persistence of her failures, how they would follow her, to the ends of the earth and until the day she died. It sucked everything to it, a black hole, all colors, all light - and she watched at the event horizon, watched as her world was pulled and distorted and decimated.

Finally something loomed in Ellie, some kind of anger or impatience, and she sloughed paint over it in fury - creams and blues and greens and blacks. They settled over it like a sickness, like a sickly medicine, and it made her want to vomit.

She could have just moved the fucking thing. But something stopped her, something that said that doing so would just be a potent reminder of its rancid, rotting source in the first place. 

So of course her nightmares would bubble and froth in her mind afterwards - a sickly, awful time capsule of all her horrors that crept up behind her down a long, dark hallway; that spoke to her in a nasally cannibal’s drawl; and she whimpered and cowered and waited, waited, waited for nothing, nothing but the gunshots from outside and her own cries and a door that wouldn’t open, a door that she had locked herself -

And the pounding kept going, it was in her head now, in her very bones -

“Ellie! Wake the fuck up.”

And there was someone knocking at her door -

“Ellie, dude, let’s go -”

And somehow Ellie found herself out of her head and across her room and letting the door fly open, worried for a moment that all the force and energy of her nightmare had come with her and she would send whomever was on the other side flying backwards -

But Cat was casual where she stood, arms crossed over her chest, loose and easy. 

Or at least she was for about a second, and then worry settled between her brows.

“Dude, are you good?”

Ellie gasped for breath and then realized that she was gasping, and tried very purposefully to slow the quiet thrum of _run_ in her body. _Your feet are on the ground, no matter what, your feet are on the ground_ \- 

“Yeah, uh...just had a nightmare.”

“Is everything okay?”

Ellie knew the question was coming and knew that she had no shred of energy to answer it. She stayed quiet. Cat - both to her credit and likely to the chagrin of Ellie’s therapist - didn’t push on.

“You don’t have to go with us, dude.” Cat’s gaze was open and earnest, and shame still flashed in Ellie, dependable as always. 

“Are you sure?”

Vigorous nodding. “We’ll bring you something when we’re done, alright? Your usual?”

Ellie watched Cat walk away, giving a half-hearted wave as she left the yard, as finality settled into her gut like a stone. 

She couldn’t tell Cat. She couldn’t tell anyone. Not now, not after going so long and saying nothing. Not after everything was finally good, not after tending the blooms of her friendships so thoroughly and dutifully, coaxing them to grow around dead things.

And the dead things remained, of course. Nothing grew from them. They rotted and oozed in her periphery. She tried to distract herself, going from patch to flowery patch, walking along - and then she would fall again and be sucked under, and there was nothing she could do but bob along the surface and gasp for breath and try to keep from drowning, and wonder how much it would hurt to drown -

“I just feel like I come back to the same thing, over and over again.”

“And what is that?”

“That...that nothing’s going to get better.”

She was too exhausted to walk home after therapy that day. So she sat and watched other people move around Jackson - people who were normal and unburdened and happy, people who were not like her, because she had never been like them anyways, and she never would - and the unfairness of it all curled up behind her throat and choked her and she allowed herself some self-indulgence, she allowed all that frustration to finally bubble up and overflow...

And then she saw Dina - beautiful, beautiful Dina, walking with purpose, going somewhere and doing something that had nothing to do with Ellie - and it was somehow incredible relief and incredible pain when she approached.

Ellie told her, or at least what little she could muster to say at that point. And it actually felt _good_ to tell her - because Dina was like a drug, and even holding little Ollie was like a drug, and _there_ was something she could do -

“I can fix that.”

The smile that Dina gave her, the teasing, even as thin of a thread as it was, felt like fucking salvation. Ellie walked home that evening feeling lighter than she had in months.

She sat Ollie on her desk and realized that she didn’t even have a needle and thread in her tiny garage. The thought appeared in her mind and then sloughed off of her - she would take care of that later. Instead, she rolled into bed and into the new lightness that suffused her mind, wallowing in her memories of Dina that had been sparked -

The early mornings were the easiest time to pretend. She could almost feel Dina next to her as she woke up, as she became aware of the cozy warmth around her. She wanted to freeze time, as if she stayed still it would all be real.

Maybe they were facing each other, with Dina breathing against the hollow of Ellie’s throat. Ellie would be the first to stir, movement coming slowly back into her limbs as she pressed Dina closer to her and coaxed her to wake up. Dina would be quick to roll over on top of Ellie, and laugh and whine about how early it was - but she knew when Ellie was serious, when Ellie existed for one reason and one reason only, and that was to make Dina feel loved and held and satisfied and claimed. 

And so she let Ellie take her time, mapping the freckles and scars along her body, and they made love for hours - but of course, time wasn’t a real thing here, it stopped for them and let them be -

Ellie woke up groggy and fuzzy and tired and alone.

The light was sharp in her eyes and she squinted and groaned. Her brain felt heavy, her body afloat and disconnected. Maybe there were things she had to do that day, sitting at the edge of her consciousness - but she couldn’t remember, and they all drifted below the hazy surface that was the Dina that existed in her mind…

Ellie somehow managed to pull herself into a sitting position. The painting still sat on its easel, the brush still in the can of paint. It was all going to get ruined if she didn’t clean it soon. Cat was down to her last batch of turpentine and, in any case, she couldn’t just soak a paintbrush - so Ellie hit it against her easel to clear off as much excess as she could, and walked the well-worn mental path to Cat and Alice’s place.

But she ran into Cat on the way, arm-in-arm with Astrid, who crowed in something like surprise and disbelief -

Oh _fuck_. Today was Astrid’s birthday, and Ellie had promised to get brunch with them all. She crossed her arms tightly against her body to hide the paintbrush and bit her lip.

“Fuck, I am _so_ sorry Astrid, I didn’t sleep last night, and -” She’d been so _consumed_. She’d forgotten.

Ellie could see the strained disappointment in Astrid’s eyes, painted over with obligation. “It’s okay, really. We’ll do something later this week!”

Ellie didn’t have the heart to tell her that she didn’t know if she’d have the energy to do anything later that week. 

She walked home with her hands shoved in her pockets, wondering at how the warmth of her memories was the greatest softness and relief that she had felt in so long - somehow greater than her time with her friends. And she needed it, she needed it now or else she would never be happy again -

Ellie closed her door and leaned back against it, sliding down until she sat on the ground, letting her head fall against her arms. Her shoulders trembled.

It was not real. It was not in her life anymore - and thinking would not make it so.

* * *

Jackson’s crisp, beauteous spring was incapacitating. 

It all felt too clear, too simple, too easy. There was still a world out there, and she was still missing it. It was so beautiful outside, and she filled her journal with half-finished drawings of trees and wildlife and blooming flowers, and JJ as she remembered him, and Dina as she remembered her. 

Page upon page of half-fleshed-out, half-finished contours and edges - she wanted to capture more, but something stopped her - some anxiety that if she filled out its full detail and took it out of her head, then it would stop being real and potent, and the happiness and beauty she saw would stop being potent, and she would have to face the cruel underbelly of the world again. 

Ollie sat on her desk, hunched over and lonely. Ellie wanted to repair him herself, but it was becoming increasingly clear that she just wasn’t in the place to do so.

The effort it took to walk to Cat’s place felt like dragging herself out of a cloying, thick hell; felt like asking her body to do something that it hadn’t done in lifetimes. But some part of her - the part that became slightly more clear and maybe, just maybe a little more loud with therapy - told her that she should go.

And so she gripped that thread in her shaking hands, pocketed the toy, and made her way, dodging puddles still fresh from a recent rainstorm. 

Alice answered her tentative knock in her usual burst of color that deeply contrasted with the damp, dripping porch on which Ellie stood.

“Can you help me with something?”

With her usual flurry and fluttering, talkative response, Alice beckoned Ellie inside, who felt like she was dragging in shadows on her heels as she entered - that sickness, that contamination that she carried…

Alice looked at her with an open, expectant gaze - and Ellie knew that she couldn’t _actually_ tell her that although her hands wouldn’t stop shaking, she still wanted to do something that would reach over to Dina even when they were so far apart, even if it was just a favor - a blip on the radar before things converged back into the tedium that was making a life without her -

So Ellie just held out Ollie, damaged ear on display, and Alice’s face crumpled into sympathy as she studied the tear. “Poor little friend!”

Ellie followed Alice into her studio, glad that she hadn’t thought to ask who the toy belonged to. Ellie didn’t quite have the heart to explain that Ollie belonged to her son, who maybe wasn’t even hers anymore.

“Make yourself at home!” Alice said brightly as she dug through some drawers and baskets, placed along the large windows that looked out from two of the studio’s walls. Ellie spared cursory glances to the bolts of cloth and spools of thread and paints that crowded the shelves rising above her head.

It always felt intrusive to Ellie, to walk into someone else’s studio and see their works in progress on the walls - newly birthed ideas or things that had to be nurtured or things that would never see the light of day. It had felt like a special kind of intimacy to keep a studio in the farmhouse, where Dina could enter whenever she was cleaning or looking for something. Ellie sat gingerly on a chair and pulled her legs up so that they were crossed in front of her.

The easel next to her bore roiling, thick, textured, paint that was still fresh. She saw the blues and blacks and deep greens of a storm, and the foaming crests of waves, and Ellie leaned forward with intent.

“Where did you find oils?”

“Cat’s made some wild trades with her tattoos,” Alice replied from where she hunched over a drawer. “Some folks came through a couple of weeks ago - here we go!” And she brandished a gleaming needle and a cord, sliding over to sit at a desk and flicking on an obscenely-bright light.

“Thanks for doing this,” Ellie called, trying to get something in before Alice drifted into that space of concentration that came with deep work. 

Alice waved a hand absently. “Anytime.” She took her bottom lip between her teeth, narrowed her eyes, and wielded the needle and thread in precise, practiced motions.

But if Ellie had hoped for the opportunity to leave Alice to her work, and to maybe go lie down in her bed and drift along in her thoughts for a few hours, Alice crushed those hopes almost immediately. 

“So…” she said, in that way that Ellie knew she was about to ask her something important or abstract or momentous, or she had noticed something about Ellie that maybe Ellie herself hadn’t noticed. “How are you?”

Ellie sighed and stared at her hands.

“And don’t just say ‘surviving.’ I swear, you and Cat both sound like a broken record.” Alice flashed a grin, and Ellie just frowned. 

“I don’t know.” 

“Mhmm.”

Alice unassumingly, patiently waited, letting the silence billow and open between them, and Ellie once again thought about telling her how much like a therapist she seemed.

“I saw Dina the other day.”

“Me too!” Alice said brightly, as if this was astounding news. Ellie was jarringly reminded of the fact that Dina had a life outside of the brief walk she had taken that brought her past where Ellie was sitting. Something like jealousy, or maybe irritation, prickled in her stomach.

“Is she okay?”

Ellie trusted Alice to interpret the question correctly - it was rarely thrown around in reference to physical well-being nowadays, when at any moment of any day anyone could become laid up with a broken bone or a sprain or an infection, or could be in the midst of recovering from one of those things. No, this prodded deeper than the flesh. 

“I think so,” Alice replied. “Astrid said something to her about working on the wiring in some of the safehouses.”

Tension wound its way up from between Ellie’s shoulders to sit behind her jaw, and she rubbed at the back of her neck. “That won’t happen until JJ’s older, though.”

Alice shrugged, eyes still on her work. “It’s up to her. She’s got a good system here.” It sometimes surprised Ellie how firm Alice - flighty, flexible, happy Alice - could be, and the contradiction made irritation flash in her.

And anger coiled in Ellie’s stomach - Alice didn’t know anything about Dina, didn’t know anything about what she wanted, there was no way she knew more than Ellie did, not when Ellie had practically just met her -

“Dina wouldn’t -”

Alice’s eyes flickered up and pinned her where she was.

But maybe she would. Maybe Dina was just as much of a stranger now as she had been when Ellie had first seen her in Jackson, untouchable and all the more unknowable because of how Ellie built her up in her mind, in ways that weren’t possible and weren’t fair to either of them.

And Ellie wondered if she would ever know her again, in that organic, holistic, real way - the way she knew how her shoes were scuffed with dirt and how she touched the back of her neck when she was nervous and how she bit her lip when she read something -

Ellie shook her head. “Nevermind.”

She let the space fill between her and Alice, and knew that Alice had dropped her own irritation, even though Ellie probably didn’t deserve it. Ellie eased off of the chair, looking to fill the space with something now that it billowed with the awkward aftertaste of conflict. She studied the shelves around the studio, stacked with books, and a thought tickled her -

“Do you have reference books? For life drawing?”

Alice scoffed from behind her. “Only about a hundred. Check that shelf by the door.”

Ellie ran her fingertips absently over the suggested section, pulling one at random. She flipped it open, leafing back and forth between sections until she found what she was looking for - eyes, just eyes, divorced from their faces and rendered in great detail: looking up at her, over her, to the side, at nothing at all.

“Can I borrow this?”

“Sure thing! Almost done over here.”

Ellie crawled back into her chair, legs thrown over one of the arms, absently flipping through the book. Sooner than she expected, Alice flicked off her desk lamp and slapped her thighs with her palms in finality. “All fixed!”

Alice plopped Ollie into Ellie’s cupped hands. The line of stitches were obvious, but he held together, and there was something endearing about him now. He would just keep going. At least something would. 

* * *

Ellie imagined her returning Ollie to Dina so often and so thoroughly that she felt inoculated with certainty in how it would go. She let it play behind her eyelids until it became more real than her own reality. 

But then Dina left, and she didn’t look back. 

And Ellie felt a wave of utter naivety and stupidity wash over her. She slammed her door and curled up in bed and didn’t leave until late the next morning.

Ellie had built up that interaction so much in her head. The scenarios ranged simple to absurd, but all ended with Dina accepting her whimpered apology and holding her and kissing her, and putting them back on that long, winding path to forever.

“And I just...I felt so fucking _stupid_...”

“Why is that?”

“I _believed_ that it would be that easy. That it would just happen. What the _fuck_ is wrong with me?”

Her journal became a storm, rumbling with repeated attempts and repeated failings. She spent an hour flipping through Alice’s reference book, finding semi-suitable pictures or drawings, and then propping it up against one of her shelves and staring at it from various angles and lightings. She wanted to replace the image in her mind with something, but nothing worked. Nothing nothing _nothing_.

She considered using her own reflection as reference, until she stood in the dark bathroom, parallel to the mirror, and found that she couldn’t turn to face it.

After Dina suggested it, Ellie wanted to believe that going to the farmhouse would just sneak up on her - that she would wake up one day, having already done it. That she wouldn’t have to make the decision that this was the day, this was the hour, this was the minute, this was the second.

“I don’t think I can go back there.”

She touched the bracelet absently, running her fingertips along the hamsa charm until it warmed under her touch, and thought about cowardice.

“Have you been to his grave since you came back?”

And so it was placed in front of her, the obvious next step, a “starting point” as her therapist had called it - as if the immense, indescribable miasma of her grief and anger could start anywhere, as if it didn’t reach back in space and time until it wove into her very being...

But it was at least something she could drift into, without any real commitment or decision-making. And she did, one evening after farm rotation. She shook the soreness from her hands and brushed the dust from her pants and let the thought seep into her brain - maybe she would visit his grave today.

She let that _maybe_ carry her down a side road, turn left, down a main road. The gate sat in her periphery, looming.

Maybe.

She turned her body and took it in head-on. 

Maybe.

The ground moved under her feet anyways.

She was fifteen feet from the headstone when she felt that inevitable realization rise up like bile in her throat, that she had made a _stupid fucking mistake_ \- but she couldn’t stop her feet, couldn’t stop her body -

And the rocks were sharp in her knees and she pressed down on them all the harder, as if it could be some kind of small penance for what she had done. It was no such thing.

“Hi.”

The silence was a deafening roar in her ears.

“I c-” Her words died. She swallowed and tried again.

“I know it’s been a...a while. I’m s-” Her voice died in her throat again.

Did he know? Did he know how many people she had killed? Did he know how many people had whimpered and died in front of her?

Did he know how often she wallowed through that darkness, that cold, bloody night, reliving it over and over again and each time leaving with him alive and whole?

Did he know how hot and bright her anger surged in her, at what he had taken from her, at how he had been taken from her?

Did he know how much she l-

“Ellie!”

The voice shook Ellie out of her stasis and she raised her face and saw Maria, walking towards her, one hand outstretched.

“Wes found it - you forgot this -”

Still kneeling, Ellie took the hamsa bracelet back and slipped it over her wrist, feeling shame curl in her stomach. “Thanks.”

Maria shifted from foot to foot, clearly weighing her options. She finally made to turn around. “I’ll leave you two alone.”

“Wait...Maria.”

And all of her old instincts were telling her to shut the _fuck_ up, to swallow it all down and go home and fall asleep - but another part of her gasped and coughed like it was finding breath for the first time -

“I don’t know how to do this.”

Maria stood beside her, and Ellie was now painfully aware of how she waited for further explanation.

“I don’t know how to...how to let him go.”

And Maria settled by her shoulder, delicate like a bird and heavy in presence, and Ellie wanted to bury her face in her hands and disappear - she was so stupid for involving her in this, so, so fucking stupid -

But there were still things unsaid, things that haunted her, and something in her was forcing them out, and she choked and gasped as hot tears slipped down her face -

“I don’t know who I am...I don’t know why I’m _here_.” And if she wanted to list all the things she didn’t know, all the things that haunted her and walled her away from everyone, she would sit here until nightfall, it would take so much _time_ -

Maria’s hand was on her upper back, rubbing back and forth and pressing hard enough so that Ellie swayed with her motions. 

“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know…”

“He loved you, Ellie...We love you...”

And the overwhelming desire to _make_ her understand filled Ellie up in a hot, sobbing rage - all the things that she had done wrong, all the ways that she had fucked up, and all the ways she had to and would continue to pay for it -

“I can’t...I can’t...I want to make it _better_ , I want to make it _stop_ , I need to _fix it_ -” And her voice rose in tone and in pitch and something _snapped_ in her and she slammed her palms into the ground, into those sharp sharp rocks, hoping one would cut her open so she could die right here - and some kind of half-scream rose and died in her throat, like a dying animal -

“Please come back, please come back, please _come back_ -” She moaned and swayed and rocked, as if the repetitive movement could slough her pain away, and her arms wrapped around herself as she hunched forward -

Maria’s hand was still at her back, constant pressure and constant presence, even as Ellie dissolved into meaningless, deflated repetition - “Come back, come back, come back…” And she wished that she had asked Dina to teach her how to pray, how to commune, how to find a way to live with herself in the great expanse of all her failings -

“I’m sorry, Ellie, I’m sorry…”

“I’ll do anything, I’ll do _anything_ , please…”

A breeze picked at her hair and caressed her wet face. Jackson’s sounds drifted up around her and the world spun and spun.

“ _Please…_ ”

She didn’t remember going home. 

She only remembered that the gravesite hung over her like a failure, and she felt dissolved, like she had been taken apart - time was a meaningless thing.

Eventually, the scaffolding of therapy allowed her to stumble through her days a little easier. Maria brought over leftovers, in a surprising and not-surprising show of generosity. Ellie felt sore and heavy and weak, as if she were thrown into mourning for a second time, or perhaps had never truly mourned until now.

And Dina’s suggestion still weighed heavily in her mind. 

Things were unfinished, and their weight and clarity sat heavy on her as she watched the gray light of sunrise peak over the dark horizon.

 _I can’t tell you what to do, but I can tell you that you have a choice_.

She at least owed it to herself to try. 

* * *

Tulip stamped a hoof in impatience as Ellie adjusted her cinch and checked over her saddlebags one more time.

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” She mounted in one smooth motion and Tulip pranced under her, coiled like a spring. A storm rumbled on the horizon, thick and heavy and bearing down on them. Ellie knew she only had a few hours. She squeezed Tulip with her calves, and they were away.

It had been a while since the mare had gone out for a good ride, and she bucked and snorted playfully for a few strides before flattening out into a steady lope. “Dingus,” Ellie muttered under her breath. 

The old trail was overgrown in some places - this was not a well-traveled route by patrols. Ellie felt something akin to whiplash as she reached back into her memories for the exact path - it seemed like a lifetime ago that she had traveled along this path with Dina behind her, still pregnant - filled with something like victory, that she had found them a home. And now she returned to what remained.

She took breaks on the trail, letting her hand draw in what she told herself was its own accord. She let something take shape, something that she didn't quite want to acknowledge, but that she would glance at every now and then and then put away...

Equal parts old winter and new spring pressed around her, as the earth shook off the old and slowly embraced the new. A damp chill crept under her gloves and under her collar where she was starting to sweat, and Ellie kept one eye on the darkening horizon as Tulip picked her way along the trail.

The farmhouse greeted her like a dying thing. The storm clouds cast it in a gray pallor. It creaked and swayed, in that familiar and unfamiliar way, as she approached. The sounds ran through old paths in Ellie’s mind that made her ache with nostalgia. 

She almost couldn’t look at it - at the full, soft life that she and Dina had shared, and that she had so readily thrown away. 

Somehow, the interior was emptier than when she had found it. It had been an abandoned thing then, but now it was a place where something had lived and died, and that cast it in a new emptiness.

The stairs creaked under her feet in the same, familiar, aching way.

But despite her searching, Ellie couldn’t find anything that reminded her of Joel. A flash of irritation at Dina went up in her - this was just another reminder of her failures, of all that she had done wrong -

And then she saw that the door to her studio was open.

Stepping inside felt like stepping into some kind of perverse time capsule. There was her art, her measured attempts to capture the beauty of her new life. But the room was dim and dry and lifeless, illuminated by the watery sun that shone through an open window.

A breeze picked at the curtains and lifted them weakly into the air, and Ellie smelled rain.

And the guitar sat on the floor, waiting for her. 

She tuned it clumsily, feeling clunky and imprecise in her ear. How long had it been? Since that night, the night she left - when she selfishly let herself look back at when things were actually good, framed in the shadow of her decision to leave. The memories that came to her felt old and untouched -

The light, thrumming happiness that was kissing Dina, the absolute shock that came with something imagined and desired becoming real -

And the solid feeling in her body as she walked away from Joel that night, that was so surprisingly _steady_ and _easy_ \- that said that tomorrow wasn’t promised but at least it was _possible_ now -

She didn’t realize until she was riding out with Dina the next morning that something had lifted from her shoulders, something that had become so persistent that she hadn’t even noticed it was there anymore. And maybe the snow glinted a little brighter and the winter air was a little more crisp and Dina’s laugh was a high, sparkling sound and Ellie _loved_ her -

And she loved Joel, too.

It crept up on her, that day, as she watched Dina breathe against her bare shoulder - as she let herself feel that warmth that she had kept from herself for so long - as she very, very tentatively let herself reach for a future that she had let play on behind her eyelids just to torture herself - 

Joel would have words for her about her burgeoning relationship, she knew that - and she’d take his advice with part scoff and part genuine appreciation. She’d go to him because Dina still _scared_ her and it scared her how much Ellie loved her, but Joel always knew how to talk her down and boil things down to their simplest parts - that as long as she and Dina were good to each other and honest with each other, they’d be fine. And Joel would be in consistent orbit around them as she and Dina learned and grew together, and maybe he would watch them get married and start a family and regale them with stories about Sarah as they stumbled through parenthood...

And Joel would tell her how _proud_ he was of her, and Ellie would believe him.

It could be _real_. It could be _hers_.

Nora’s voice came to her again - _Think of what he did_ \- and the truth was, now she knew exactly what that was. He was the closest thing to family she had ever had, and he had shown her exactly how much he loved her, and why would she expect anything less?

And it was such a great, horrible contradiction, that he had done so by taking away the thing that she had needed, more than _anything_ \- all because he loved her. But she had a choice.

She could let go. Not because he deserved it in any particular way, but because she loved him back. Not just because she wanted to be free of this pain, but because she wanted that for him too.

The body of the guitar had warmed under her hands, and she rubbed at it absently.

She couldn’t go back, she couldn’t undo what she had done - just like she couldn’t undo the love he had for her, no matter how much she wanted to, no matter how many times she brought her knife into another person and another person and another person. It wouldn’t mean that she would die on that operating table...

And it had taken her so long to see that, and _why_ had it taken her so long, and how much time had she wasted? But maybe that didn’t matter anymore.

They had their pain, and their betrayal, and Joel could try to rationalize it to her all he wanted, and she would push back all she wanted - and that was their crossroads, their conflict. But she had a choice.

Ellie delicately rested the guitar against the windowsill, watching the weakening sun glint off of the fretboard. She had chosen to take her hands off of Abby’s throat. And she would choose love now, instead of what she thought she had been running towards - since Riley had died, since Tess, since Sam and Henry, since her mother -

The grass undulated around her as she walked, the waves of that old ocean lipping at her clothes and her fingertips as she approached the fence. The shore. A few fat raindrops splashed around her. 

It was, in fact, the one thing she had been running _away_ from - since Riley, since Tess, since Sam and Henry, since Joel, since she walked away from Dina - because she thought she was doomed, forever, to be alone -

The sound of the steady rain in the trees was a meditative, percussive thing, and the smell of damp earth wafted up around her and Tulip -

And she had thought that this was her purpose in life - if not to be the cure, then to hunt and to kill. That would be the next best thing - not all her love and her creativity and all that she was and all that she wanted to be. It rained steadily now, and the cool water joined her tears that cut across her face.

She could - she _would_ \- choose rest, and the idea was so simple to her that she was at once dumbfounded at how long it had taken to come to her.

And here was Jackson, and she stumbled back, as drenched and filthy as if she’d just climbed out of the ocean again - and her tears fell thick and fast because here was the home that she could go to, finally, finally, _finally_. She threw her arms around Maria and sobbed because she _knew_.

She knew - that something that had been so overwhelming and looming and impossible, that had followed her around and haunted her and made her hate herself and made her want to die - 

That it could be set down, it could be shared with others, it could be carried, it could be helped - 

And she could rest - maybe not perfectly, not without her mistakes, but it was something. It was more than something. It was _real_. It was _hers_.

It was, for once, a life that could be lived.

* * *

Ellie woke early the next morning, rubbing at her bleary eyes.

Her journal sat on her bedside table, still open to the newly-finished drawing of Joel, guitar in hand, sitting on his porch. Alice’s reference book had been shoved into Ellie’s backpack, waiting to be returned. 

A weak light was shining through her window. It splashed the canvas with color - with a soft yellow that lightened to a washed out blue. In some cobbled-together way - a way that was unexpected, unplanned, unimagined - it came together in composition and color and chance.

It was beautiful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, references:
> 
> \- “You shouldn’t make art where you fuck” is from "A Little Life" by Hanya Yanagihara. 
> 
> Second, feelings:
> 
> This chapter is the hardest goddamn fictional thing I’ve ever written. This is the chapter that I have been itching and dreading to write since I started this story. Some of y’all have correctly guessed that I am pulling from some real-life experiences as I write from these characters’ perspectives, and this is especially true for Ellie. 
> 
> To keep things brief: as someone who has struggled for years with depression, with not knowing my purpose in life, with feeling small and unwanted and useless, with feeling like important things were taken away from me without my consent, and then responding to that with so much anger and rage that I didn’t recognize myself anymore and ended up hurting people I cared about - I thought that the ending of this game was fucking perfect. 
> 
> And I will never do it justice, but for a while now I’ve felt like I need to honor how strongly this story resonates with me, how real and true that epilogue feels to me, and that’s why I’m writing this.
> 
> Take care of yourselves, y’all.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're back! With the longest chapter so far! Oops.

Somehow, and in spite of her worry otherwise, the pieces of Dina’s life were starting to come together.

It was like repairing something shattered, only to find that not all the pieces could be recovered, or they didn’t fit together perfectly anymore - but they fit together beautifully, even with the gaps and cracks.

The bright, warm summer brought with it more reminders of what usually would have been done on the farmhouse - what new game was moving through the area, what vegetables they could coax from their lush garden. Dina tried her best not to look so closely at how much things had changed for her.

The process was helped along by her new house - though it wasn’t so new anymore, she realized one day. The process of living in a previously-lived-in space was to reabsorb all these new pieces, and make them her own until it eventually all wore into something that was undoubtedly hers. 

Even after having lived there for a few months, she still found possessions that were not hers somewhere in the house - in little nooks and crannies, sometimes clearly forgotten and sometimes in places that were playful, that reminded her of children. At night, when she lay in bed and failed to sleep, Dina couldn’t help but ascribe stories to her findings - a small, almost-prayer that the people who had lived here before had found some modicum of peace and happiness.

Anything could be made into something familiar. After drifting in and out of relationships for so long, it was a familiar exercise to Dina.

It felt like the opposite of raising JJ, of watching him grow and become someone. That was a process of observation as much as it was of making - Dina sometimes felt like she spent more time watching her son discover who he was through trial and error, than directing him towards what she wanted. She had never been to the beach, but it reminded her of sandcastles, built up on the shore, easily morphed, and sometimes discarded and dismantled entirely.

Dina wondered which ones would become permanent, and which would wash away in the tide. She looked for little flashes of this every day. 

JJ was fascinated by drawing, and Dina soon obtained enough paper to - she hoped, at least - keep him occupied, in the sense that the walls of both her house and Robin and Susan’s were safe from his creative urges. Her fridge was soon papered in his drawings, although at this point they were more scribbles than coherent shapes and forms. Dina liked to think that her son saw something important in them nonetheless. 

Cat came over one evening to borrow a book, and JJ was visibly enchanted by the tattoos on her arm. He babbled to her and touched them with one hand as he clutched Ollie with the other.

“Little early for ink, big guy,” Cat chuckled. 

Whenever Astrid was over to bake something - which was rapidly becoming a more regular occurrence - JJ sat in his high chair and grasped for the utensils they were using, laughing and babbling when Astrid blew raspberries against his neck.

But Dina didn’t think she had ever heard such a bright, happy sound as JJ’s laugh when she took him riding on Japan. Now that the ground was somewhat dry after spring’s heavy showers, she felt safe enough to take him around Jackson, especially the parts of the walls that encircled lush green fields.

She would dismount and let Japan graze while JJ toddled around, to a low hill and a stream, grasping at flowers and grasses and bringing them back to her excitedly. 

As promised, Dina picked clear days with bright, blue skies for riding. She giggled, holding her hands out protectively as he walked up to the grazing Japan. The mare nickered and nosed at JJ’s hair, causing him squeal with laughter. He fisted green grass in his hand, and Dina showed him how to hold his hand flat as he offered it to Japan. He giggled incessantly as she licked at his fingers.

It was hard not to get lost out there, in their little slice of perfect wilderness. 

Her obligations to her son always took precedence, but Dina was starting to let herself be folded back into the institutional workings of Jackson again. If she wanted to go on patrol and fix up safe houses, she had to be in good standing with the electrician’s guild, on which she was on slightly shaky ground. Dustin, Astrid’s father, looked like he had swallowed something bitter when she followed Astrid into the shop one morning, and watched her all but shove a box of homemade cookies into his hands.

“Got a favor to ask you, Dad,” Astrid said in that firm, “do not fuck with me” tone that she rarely brought out. Dina supposed she could hardly blame him when she saw his downturned frown and wrinkled brows. 

“Here to stay, sir,” she said brightly, holding out a hand, the other filing away the experience to weave into a story the next time she was getting dinner with Cat and Alice. She had only been a feature of the guild for a few months after returning to Jackson before she had essentially dropped everything. Somehow, Dina thought that her explanation that she was moving out to the country to live with her life partner wouldn’t go over so well.

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” he’d said, almost heavily, and Dina frowned.

She knew she had a reputation of being flighty and easy. It irritated her that it had now leaked into her work, a place where she always took pride in her commitment to quality. Not to mention that part of her wanted to explain that she’d be giving birth soon, and wouldn’t be working anyways.

But that had sort of characterized her actions back then, that desperation. So she let it go.

But Dustin had taken her on again anyways, and there were several buffers between him and Dina that made it all bearable. She was surprised to learn that she had a couple of folks under her, in a supervision capacity. This seemed especially odd given the handful of questionable comments someone had made about Eugene’s work years ago, when she was just apprenticing. But that person seemed to have rotated out - or at least, that was the tamest hypothetical that came to Dina’s mind.

So she worked it out with Robin and Susan, who were overly familiar with JJ’s schedule now, and several days a week she worked, or went on remote repairs. With the summer thunderstorms moving through on a semi-regular basis, she had worried that her skills were rusty and unused, but they came back to her faster than she expected. Dina took satisfaction at the small, contained problems that were fixing these things - circuits, insular and finite and predictable. 

And she loved the exercise of working on houses and seeing the problems that could follow - the winter gales and spring thunderstorms that would strain the circuitry, months or years down the road. It was never just a house for her - it was a commitment, it was an opportunity to be proactive, to head off trouble before it had even formed in the minds of others.

For her trouble, she let Astrid bake in her expansive kitchen even more, knowing that she complained about how her brother would monopolize her family’s kitchen. “Eaton and Alice should collaborate,” Astrid once said, in that bitter, facetious way that people sometimes talked about their siblings. It made her think of Talia, made her heart ache for something she had never had.

Of course, Dina knew that if she tried to tell Astrid that her favorite part of being friends with her had _nothing_ to do with how much she baked, Astrid would outright tell her that she didn’t believe her. But after a particularly difficult winter during which they’d lost more than a couple of known and loved patrollers, Astrid had taken it upon herself to regularly supply those going out and coming back, as well as their families, with fresh baked goods. 

Dina didn’t have the heart to tell her that a homemade muffin would probably do little to ease the sting of an injured or dead loved one, and Astrid - who was frighteningly tactical on patrol but seemed to become more and more jaded with it as time went on - stuck to this small mote of brightness. Dina sometimes wondered what so much exposure to others’ grief would do to her.

“Thanks for letting me come over, Dina,” Astrid said, genuine as she packed up her tupperware.

“No worries. JJ loves you anyways.”

“Raisin cake next time, right?”

This one, at least, was for an upcoming birthday. “Isn’t that a bit below your standards?”

“Not my fault those spring trades brought in less eggs than we were expecting. And baking a cake isn’t exactly a high priority need.”

“Tell that to Wes,” Dina said, and Astrid chuckled - “He’ll just have to deal.” Dina waved as she watched Astrid descend the front porch and tie back her long, dark hair before the brisk summer wind could snap it up.

Dina looked skyward and noted the dark thunderclouds rolling down on them from the mountains. The scent of rain was heavy on the air, and so Dina resigned herself to an afternoon of embroidery and reading stories to JJ. They’d had more than enough bright, brilliant summer days so far - one inside wouldn’t hurt. 

Of course, it would just be Dina’s luck that she didn’t keep raisins on hand, and she’d promised Astrid that she would help with the ingredients for this one. This only came after Astrid searched hell and high water for lemons for a lemon cake - and Dina hated seeing her friend so frazzled over something as simple (but not-simple in this world, she reminded herself) as lemons. Now was really, really _not_ the time for such worries. Sometimes she wondered if Astrid channeled her own worry and anger into this culinary habit of hers.

Regardless, Dina greeted Emily at her post near the entrance to the communal pantry with a smile, tapping her fingers absently on her thighs. 

“Don’t buy me out of my cherry tomatoes, you hear?” Emily’s tone was sharp, but her smile was bright, and Dina responded with an exaggerated shrug.

“I’m approaching the terrible twos, Em. I gotta keep my son happy somehow.” Dina watched Emily smirk and roll her eyes, before turning on her heel, whistling lightly as she made her way down the designated aisle. 

As the community expanded, the pantry became less of a pantry and more of what Dina knew some markets looked like in the old world, with shelving designated for various staples, grouped together by type. Whatever was available was heavily dependent on the season and the trades that had been through or were expected to come through, but Dina knew that a group with dried fruit had come through not three weeks ago, so her hopes were high.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

There was the section for dried fruit, and there was a definitive lack of raisins. Dried apples, yes. Even a small selection of dried apricots - those traders had come from California, she remembered. What the fuck else was California good for besides raisins?

“Looks like you’re out of luck, Wes,” Dina muttered under her breath. She wondered how Astrid would feel about making an eggless apple cake instead, and she frowned in mild disgust at the thought.

“Dina?”

It took her a second to register that the person standing next to her was Ellie, slouching there with her hands in her pockets. Her eyes darted to the shelf that Dina was standing in front of. 

“Hey,” Dina greeted, scuffing her boot on the floor. She gestured at the shelf. “They’re out of raisins. Stupid, right?”

“Heh, yeah,” Ellie replied, rubbing the back of her neck with her right hand. “Uh, I have some, actually. If you want to borrow them.”

“Are _you_ the reason for the raisin shortage?” Dina’s banter came to her faster than she expected, but she watched Ellie bite her lip, eyes darting to the side, and wondered if she’d overstepped. “Not sure how I’d _borrow_ raisins if I’m going to eat them,” she tried again.

“Take them. Take them is what I meant,” Ellie explained, mouth twitching into a half-smile, eyes meeting Dina’s and then glancing down again. Dina bit her lip as silence grew between them.

“Sure,” she finally replied, glancing back at the empty shelf and then down at her feet. “That would be great.”

“So I’ll bring them to you?”

“Oh, I can come get them at your place.”

“Okay. You need them now?”

“Whenever you’re heading back to your place is fine -”

“I’m can head back there now -”

“I should get back anyways, I need to pick up JJ -”

“But if you have to go you can come back -”

“Oh, if you’re heading over there now, then -”

They both trailed away as the threads of their conversation diverged and overlapped. Dina held up her hands, more to silence herself than Ellie, and wrested for control. “How about I just come by tomorrow?”

“That works,” Ellie said simply. The bridge of her nose was painted in a blush, and Dina looked away to avoid staring. 

She circled back to that interaction later that evening, with JJ asleep, as she flipped through a book - more for something to do than because she was interested in reading. That had been so...jarringly casual, hadn’t it?

Dina felt like she had almost forgotten that the base functions still existed between people - asking them for help, asking to borrow something from them, asking if they knew where to find something. 

The casualness of their conversation made something like irritation rise in her. Dina tried to avoid going to darker places in her mind, but sometimes, it crashed into her with startling clarity - the fact that Ellie had essentially stranded them at the farmhouse. She hadn’t told _anyone_ in Jackson that she was leaving them. It made anger rise like bile in Dina’s throat.

Dina didn’t realize until now how much she had evaded and compromised in their relationship. Now, looking back on it, it was exhausting to see. She couldn’t blame Ellie for what had happened to her, but regardless, it was far from ideal. They danced around their problems instead of taking them on - not head-on, but at least from an angle that was marginally more productive. 

It became such a regular pattern that she realized now that dread had been a common feeling to her - dread that things were unspooling, tangling further, getting closer and closer to breaking.

And it had felt so unfair, that such dread could fill her in such a place that was so beautiful. The window in the kitchen was perfectly positioned to watch the fields around the farmhouse turn yellow, then gold in the setting sun. Dina shifted side to side on her feet, wincing at the mild swelling that was still there, and paused in chopping vegetables to admire the view that was still breathlessly beautiful. The smell of rain was still on the wind, but barely.

She felt hyper-aware as she heard the front door creak closed and the scuffing of Ellie’s boots. Dina glanced at the clock on the wall - a few hours had passed.

The sunset was gorgeous, and the afternoon’s thunderstorm had fizzled away - and it was as if the whole universe had conspired to be beautiful today. And now she was going to ruin it. 

“Hey, babe.”

“Hey.”

Dina looked up, a small smile plastered on her face, to see Ellie rubbing the back of her neck as she walked towards the fridge and opened it.

“Do you need help?”

“I got it,” Dina replied quickly, shifting her focus singularly to the task of scooping chopped carrots into a bowl. Ellie started walking away, and Dina knew her window of opportunity was closing. She braced her hands on the cutting board.

“So...so maybe you don’t have to chop firewood so much anymore.” She tried to keep her voice casual, but cringed at how _specific_ her suggestion was.

“I don’t mind.”

Dina turned around so her back was pressed against the counter and saw that Ellie had sat down in the closest living room chair. “Are you sure?”

“Why wouldn’t I chop firewood? One of us has to do it.” There it was, that hint of exasperation.

“If it triggers you, we can -”

“It’s _fine_ , Dina. Do you need me to thaw out that rabbit?”

“I…” Ellie’s gaze was firm. “That would be helpful, thank you.”

While Ellie worked, Dina excused herself to go outside. She straightened up the unstacked pile of logs that had fallen, and wrenched out the axe that had been driven into the chopping block. She placed it back inside the barn, and when she returned, Ellie smiled and kissed her cheek and rubbed her feet while the meat thawed.

It occurred to Dina now that if it had been anyone else, she would have pushed harder. It felt like standing outside a door that was closed to her and not forcing it open, even while your instincts screamed at you to do so. And Dina hated to admit it then, but now she had her own theories as to why things were so difficult.

It was like they had been thrown together too soon, the wild energy of their love and desire crashing together in a mismatched, incongruous way. And they never had time to really figure each other out before they were forced into those desperate places of survival and grief and anger. 

When they finally settled, that mismatch was all they had ever known - those primal instincts were all they had seen of each other for months. And neither one of them was to blame more than the other, but just as much, neither one of them had been properly equipped to deal with what they had been handed.

More and more, Dina found herself craving the ease of knowing her best friend - but Ellie had always been a mystery, hadn’t she? Always so closed off, hiding parts of herself even as Dina tried to draw her out.

Dina turned the thought over in her mind as she rocked back and forth on her feet, watching Ellie unlock the front door of her studio.

“Thanks for doing this,” she said, less out of obligation than she had hoped. She watched Ellie turn back in the low light of her room, rummaging around just out of Dina’s sight.

Dina couldn’t help but look inside. There was an easel directly in front of her sightline, and Ellie’s bed, semi-made, off to the left. Instead of the clutter of photographs and drawings that had been pinned above it for years - and then packed away, and then returned - there was a series of what looked like paintings. They were all small, all suffused with either bright oranges, deep reds, or pale, pale blues. Dina recognized them as late evenings and early, early mornings.

She couldn’t help but try to see evidence of who Ellie was now, and she found herself caught up in that train of thought. What she was doing, what she was thinking? What was she reading? What was she eating? What -

“Here.” 

The action of taking the box of raisins felt so trivial to Dina after all the frantic thinking that her mind was doing, and she almost dropped it with Ellie in front of her.

“You good?”

“Uh...yeah. Yeah.”

“Okay. Goodnight, Dina.”

“Goodnight.”

Dina paused at the gate. This time, she did look back.

* * *

It was funny, how in choosing to look for something, you suddenly saw it everywhere.

It wasn’t that Dina had never seen Ellie out in Jackson until now. It was just that she had chosen to look elsewhere, to direct her focus entirely whenever she saw or heard Ellie. 

But now she was jarringly impossible to miss. And not just the sound of her voice, or the sight of her walking down the street, but the minute details as well - seeing how she talked to people, how she rubbed the back of her neck and scuffed her shoes, how she gestured when she was excited and looked down at her hands when she was nervous.

It made part of Dina ache with familiarity. 

She knew that voice, how it pitched and dipped and drawled. She knew those strong, precise hands. They may have rushed into things, but as a result, all those tiny details that were so _Ellie_ were written into Dina’s mind, and it was beyond easy to fall back into them.

It didn’t help - or maybe it did - that they had mutual friends, and so they could overlap from time to time. And slowly, Ellie was less of a shadow figure in the background of Jackson and more something that popped up in a tangible way. Dina saw little flashes of her more and more, pieces that she gleaned from Astrid and Alice and Cat, slivers in the light.

Cat would complain (facetiously, of course) about some space book that Ellie had been going on and on about, and with a jolt Dina would realize that it was one of the books that she had left in Ellie’s studio after returning to Jackson. Astrid would make an offhand comment about one of the more unruly horses aiming a kick at Ellie when she assisted with shoeing one week, and Dina’s heart would leap into her throat until Astrid acted out the long, colorful string of curses that Ellie had muttered after her successful dodge.

And it all seemed to crash around her, especially at night, when her overtired brain grasped for those things that made her heart thrum in happiness. Her love for Ellie was like an old, easy reflex, tempered by the time and space between them now - the time and space that told her to do the thing that she had always been afraid to do.

Because some of the pieces she saw were _different_ , even from when they were younger. And not knowing them made Dina afraid. 

What had happened? What had changed in Ellie? What was changing now? And, although she didn’t want to look the thought in the face: Would Dina fall behind her? Would Ellie move on into someplace better and leave Dina behind, turning over the questions she had never asked for the rest of her life?

Dina knew in her heart that these questions couldn’t go unanswered now - not with this detritus between them. Not when Ellie was inevitably drifting back into her life. Not when Dina was _letting_ her back in. And certainly not when Dina still didn’t know how to feel or what to do, or how to carry herself…

Dina didn’t have a reason to go to Ellie’s place, so she knocked on the door at what she hoped was an opportune time, when it was late enough for most rotations to be wrapped up, but early enough so that Ellie wouldn’t be asleep yet.

She felt more nervous than when she had planned to kiss Ellie that night at the dance, but it was almost embarrassingly obvious why. That night, she had been the one to take control, to finally choose to act on her long-held feelings. But now, instead of fresh newness and excitement, she felt a deeper, darker thing that threatened to spill over - the fear of picking something back up that was frightening, that had been avoided and pushed away for so long.

Ellie answered the door looking rumpled and surprised, and Dina held fast to the _why_ of her being here, even if it was a dark, scary thing.

Dina fixed her eyes on the patch of skin between Ellie’s eyebrows, rather than her eyes. “Can we talk?”

Ellie froze just briefly, a small hiccup in her movement, but Dina noticed it all the same.

“Yeah. Yeah, of course.” Ellie’s voice seemed artificially calm, and she glanced down at her feet.

“Tomorrow?” Dina supplied. Ellie swayed, and went to rub her right arm with her left hand, and -

“What -”

Dina had to restrain herself from reaching out and grabbing Ellie. Were her _fingers_ missing?

“What the _fuck_?” The words left her mouth before she had realized she had verbalized them. How the fuck hadn’t she noticed that by now? Dina swallowed at the nausea that crested in her, less from the missing fingers and more from the absolute utter change their missingness represented. “What happened?”

Ellie bit her lip

“It happened in Santa Barbara,” Ellie muttered, looking down at her hand. 

“How?”

Ellie froze - and it occurred to Dina that although she wanted answers, maybe now wasn’t the best time. She couldn’t just walk up to Ellie’s studio, unannounced, and start demanding things of her. 

“Nevermind,” Dina added hurriedly. “We can talk about it later. If you want.” And Ellie let out a long exhale and looked down at her feet again.

She came over at night, after JJ had gone down, as Dina had requested. She was silent like a shadow on Dina’s porch, and Dina had to make sure she wasn’t just hearing things when the soft sound of her knocks echoed through the first floor.

“Beautiful place.” 

“Thanks. You seem...okay.”

“I think so...I think things are...better. That advice you gave was good.”

“Good. I’m glad. Find anything weird in the farmhouse?”

The ghost of a chuckle left Ellie’s lips. “No, not really.” She didn’t shut the joke down, but she didn’t respond either, so Dina let it drop. They went into the kitchen - Dina next to a chair that she had drawn up to one side of the island, and Ellie leaned against the sink, across from her. The island sat between them, a buffer.

Dina watched Ellie’s eyes linger on her fridge - papered in JJ’s drawings - before Ellie inhaled and looked back to face her. “What did you want to talk about?”

The weather. The herds. The patrols. Dina still had time to evade. She still could.

But she chose not to. She couldn’t just _let it be_ anymore.

“I want…” Dina sighed. She wanted to balk. Was this even what she should be doing? Why would she ever push this hard when Ellie had pushed her away for less?

“I _need_ to...before we do anything else. I need to know.”

“Know what?” Ellie’s voice was soft, but the question felt like an insult to Dina.

“I need to know _why_.” And Ellie swallowed and nodded, and there was no going back now.

“You _stranded_ us, Ellie. No one in Jackson knew that you left us. We could have been attacked. We could have _died_ .” Dina was momentarily shocked at how even her voice was, as she stood in front of the cause of her profound heartbreak. “You didn’t give us a chance, you didn’t talk to me, you were just gonna leave in the middle of the night? Leave us there in the middle of nowhere? Leave your _son?_ ”

Ellie had closed her eyes, was now forcing them shut, and kept them closed even as she spoke. “I was stupid, it was so stupid, I wasn’t in the right mind -”

Dina knew she had to rein herself back in, but some part of her kept pushing - “ _Why?_ ”

And she hated herself for pushing so hard, but then something in Ellie snapped, something that made her raise her arms and gesture in exasperation and look at Dina with open vulnerability in her open eyes, with that one thing that Dina had been seeking for _years_ \- and it now crashed over her, large and looming, a riptide to the truth -

“Because it _wasn’t enough!_ ”

Dina felt herself almost draw back at the words, shrink. Because here were her worst fears, on the lips of her former lover, the things that she had poured over for hours and hours when she came back to Jackson, and the horrifying conclusion that she had failed. And Ellie just kept going -

“I loved every second there with you and it wasn’t enough. I was too...too…”

At this point, Dina didn’t know what expression was written across her face, but it registered with Ellie. She raised her hands placatingly and took a deep breath, clearly trying to center herself, as Dina felt herself drifting further and further away from the rock of her new life to which she had tethered herself...

But Ellie met her eyes. “This isn’t your fault.” Her voice was lower, firmer, but Dina didn’t dare consider it as the truth. “This isn’t your fault, I promise -” And Dina wanted to scoff - since when had Ellie’s promises meant anything? But she just _kept going_. 

“I need to...explain...a lot.” And anger flashed in Dina again - she’d had _months_ to explain - but then she remembered that she’d asked Maria to keep Ellie away from her, that she’d _needed_ Ellie to stay away from her. And now she had chosen otherwise.

Dina let out a long exhale and sat down, uncrossing her arms. “Okay.” It washed over her, in startling clarity. Was she finally going to get the truth? 

Ellie leaned back against the counter, hands braced next to her sides. She stared at her feet, and Dina couldn’t help but count - five seconds, ten seconds, fifteen...

“Joel...and I…” Her mouth pulled and her face crumpled momentarily. She scrunched her eyes shut, inhaled, and tried again. “You know I’m immune...and that there was going to be a cure.” Ellie blinked rapidly and swallowed again, seeming to come back to herself a little.

“And it would have killed you,” Dina supplied quietly.

“It would have killed me,” Ellie responded dryly, inclining her head. She took another shaking breath, and raised her eyes to meet Dina’s.

“I wanted it...to mean something. _I_ wanted to mean something, to...” And Dina realized that Ellie was talking about her death, and the casual way in which she did made something like ice water settle in her stomach. She gestured broadly with her arms, vague and at everything - “To this, all of this…” She inhaled shakily. “It has to mean something,” she repeated quietly, almost to herself. Her face pulled and crumpled.

“But he stopped them.” Her voice cracked on _stopped_. Ellie gulped and stared down at her feet again. She took another deep breath, and Dina saw her hands shaking against the countertop.

“He _took_ that from me. My chance to mean something. And…” Ellie’s voice caught and she stared at some spot on the far wall. “And I couldn’t live with it. So we never...we didn’t speak. For a long time. For _years_.” 

Understanding suddenly washed through Dina, and she was speaking without realizing it. “That summer. When you ran away? Was that…?” as Ellie nodded, and unbidden Dina could picture her again - as angry and wild as a hurricane, but solemn, pushing Dina away and shrouded in a thick, dark cloud...

“And then…” Ellie made a vague circling motion with her hand, as if to indicate the passage of time. “And then, the night of the dance, I was...I don’t know.” Ellie looked at the ceiling, thinking.

“I wanted to talk to him again. Something made me want to talk to him again.” There was a soft, vulnerable look on her face. “So we talked,” she said simply. “And...and…” She seemed lost in that memory, eyes far away, swallowing hard. Dina waited.

“And I wanted to...to forgive him? Not immediately and maybe not for a long time, but...but...I wanted that chance. I wanted to try. And that’s what I told him, that night. After the dance. And then...”

And understanding crashed through Dina again - horrible, horrible understanding that made tears prick at the corners of her eyes and her breath go out of her. Ellie scrubbed at her face with her sleeve and let her sentence hang, shying away from it.

“And then the farmhouse was perfect and you’re perfect and JJ’s perfect and...and…” Ellie’s voice broke and her composure was in tatters, as she gasped and tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. 

She raised her gaze again to meet Dina’s, and Dina saw the depth of her pain there.

“...And I never got to tell him that I loved him.” 

Ellie’s voice was so, so small, and the words were so, so heavy, and she just crashed on, a frantic edge to her voice - “Did he know? I have to know, Dina, I _have_ to. And then Tommy showed up and went on about Santa Barbara and I thought...I thought it would make it all _stop_...” Her voice caught and she gasped and swayed.

Dina didn’t realize she was on her feet until she was, didn’t realize she had walked around the island until she stood directly in front of Ellie. The words were out of her mouth before she could look at them fully in the light -

“Can I hug you?”

Ellie blinked down at her through her tears and seemed to freeze. Her eyebrows knit together in concern and she immediately backtracked -

“You don’t have to -”

No. That was _not_ good enough for Dina.

“We can still hug. Come here.”

Ellie stepped into the circle of Dina’s arms and, after more than a year, Dina held her.

Ellie didn’t feel as thin as she looked, but the combination between familiarity and unfamiliarity under Dina’s hands washed over her in waves of surprise and aching nostalgia. She firmed her arms around Ellie as her ribcage expanded and contracted with her rapid, irregular breathing.

Dina didn’t speak, didn’t murmur anything - just rested her head on Ellie’s shoulder and held her and all her hurt. It struck her that perhaps she had never properly comforted Ellie in her grief. She had been so, so distant on the ride back to Jackson from the chalet, folded in on herself on Shimmer’s back. Dina tried to ride next to her when the trail allowed it, and it scared her, so much: to be wrenched from one utmost vulnerable position to another - to be with her in those most intimate of ways, one in love and one in death.

Later, Dina washed Ellie’s bloodied hands and face and dressed her for bed and laid down with her, tucking Ellie’s head against the hollow of her neck. Ellie clutched at her desperately and Dina almost suggested sex, but the thought soon curdled in her stomach at the sight of Ellie’s distracted, distant eyes. Ellie didn’t cry so much as shook, as if part of her was still down in that basement, itching and roiling to do something, to do anything -

When Dina woke up in the early early hours of the morning, Ellie was turned away from her, curled up into herself. Dina rested her palm on Ellie’s back and moved closer. When Ellie spoke, her voice was thick and low and dark.

“I’m going after them.”

Dina could tell by the finality in her tone that she never expected Dina to join her, that she had resigned herself to doing this alone. She moved her hand from Ellie’s back along her arm, scooting closer as she reached around Ellie’s body to find her hand and thread their fingers together.

“I’m going with you,” Dina breathed. She kissed the base of Ellie’s neck, and Ellie’s hand in hers tightened. 

At the time, Dina had thought that her decision reflected the depth of her love for Ellie, that she would walk right into hell with her. Now, she saw another side to it - a desperation to see Ellie’s pain leave her, to obliterate it with her own two hands if need be. Because Dina finally, finally had her and loved her, and now she had been ripped away.

But now, with Ellie shaking and crying in her arms, Dina knew that her pain ran far deeper than something that could have been solved in Seattle, or even in Santa Barbara. She rubbed circles on Ellie’s back, on the scars that she knew were there, while Ellie’s heart thrummed under her hands, rapid and weak.

Eventually Ellie’s sobs quieted. Dina exhaled against her shoulder and extracted herself, though her arms remained around Ellie’s neck. She looked up.

And they were so close, close enough that Dina could practically count her eyelashes, could see the flecks of brown in her green irises. Ellie was so _warm_ and solid and here and it had been so, so long -

If Dina kissed her, how would she taste? Like the salt of her tears and the hard desperation of her survival? Like pine and woodsmoke and spring rain, like -

No, no, no. Ellie was _grieving_. This wasn’t Dina’s moment to take.

She didn’t even know if Ellie still wanted this, wanted her - and the realization made something cold settle in Dina’s stomach. She didn’t even know if _she_ wanted this herself.

Dina let her arms drop, feeling exposed as she stepped back from Ellie. She took a tissue from the box on the counter, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose loudly. She detoured over to the trash can to throw the tissue away - almost grateful for the excuse to step away from Ellie’s body - and went back behind the island. She set her hands in front of her. 

“Thank you for telling me all of that.” Dina’s voice was scratchy. “I know it was...difficult.”

“Thank you for...for asking.” Ellie’s voice was soft, but she looked at Dina with an open, vulnerable expression. “I’ve really only said those things to my therapist, so…” She trailed away.

And with all that laid out in front of them, and silence between them now, Dina felt overcome by an urgency to pull the conversation back to the here and the now, to something immediately true.

“I miss you -” and the words seemed to stick in the back of Dina’s throat, like she didn’t want to acknowledge them until she spoke them, and then they were real and so true that they hurt. “- And I have no idea how I can trust you ever again.”

“I know.” Ellie swallowed hard, stared down at her feet, and rubbed her arm with her marred hand. Her voice was soft and cracked on her next words. “I miss you too.”

Dina let that hang over them, turning it over slowly in her head - the long, winding journey that had been their friendship, their relationship, their separation, and now. It made her head hurt…

And Dina reached for another tangent, if anything to give it all time to percolate in her head.

“...So there was going to be a cure?” Outside of the obligation of seeing her cry in public and trying to comfort her, Dina could now confront that fact head on - something so monstrously influential in their world, and Ellie had brushed up against it, and then ended up here, of all places.

“Was. Not anymore.”

“...And you would have died.” Dina had to say it again, just to make sure.

“Yeah.”

“And you wanted that?”

“At the time.”

“Do you still want it now?” 

There was the easy, biting answer to this - that it didn’t matter because it wasn’t even possible anymore, because Joel had seen to that - and Dina watched that answer gather behind Ellie’s eyebrows and then smooth away after a second.

“No.”

“Okay.”

Silence came between them again, and it suddenly occurred to Dina that their time together tonight was ending - how could it not, after all that had been revealed - and she almost panicked, and then Ellie spoke.

“I’m sorry, Dina.” Ellie’s eyes were huge and watery and she hugged her arms closer to herself. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“I know.” She let her voice soften. There was nothing else she could say right now. The most burdensome, most painful part of their conversation was behind them now, looming in the background, and Dina decided to let Ellie pick where they would go next.

“I, uh...I know it’s your decision, but I...I would love to...to see JJ. If that’s okay.” Ellie stumbled in the sentence, as if she had to force the words out, to create them in some manual way.

“That is my decision,” Dina agreed, a little curt. She let silence fill the space between them, thinking, weighing her options.

Her child still deserved to know his mother. And Dina was still in control here - still had the power to set and enforce boundaries, to which she knew Ellie would listen.

Dina spoke absently, almost letting herself lean into the offering. “Astrid’s coming over this weekend to help me bake a cake. Why don’t you join us and watch him?”

Ellie looked utterly stunned, as if she hadn’t expected it to come that easily. “Okay.” 

“Okay,” Dina replied simply. She noted the pitch darkness outside the windows. “You should go home.”

 _You are home_.

The thought rose high in Dina and she worried that she would start crying again, but then Ellie nodded and turned back towards the front door.

A minute later, Dina watched Ellie vanish into the night, carried down the darkened street by her long, loping gait.

Looking back, Dina would view that night as a fulcrum, as a hinge in their relationship. The both of them had been sent plummeting towards something inevitable, something unknowable - something that could not be stopped.

* * *

Ellie came over on a rainy, blustery day, a day when Dina would have expected rolling outages across Jackson. Luckily, Dustin had excused her already, and things hadn’t gotten so bad that she’d had to assist with anything _ad hoc_. 

It all felt a little too much like Seattle, to hear her knock and open the door and see her standing there, dripping wet - to the point where Dina almost considered waiting by the door until she heard Ellie walking up the porch, but Astrid and JJ took up her attention.

So she was both rolling out dough and trying to placate JJ when a knock sounded at the door, and Dina’s heart dropped into her stomach - she plastered on a smile for Astrid’s sake (she was still Ellie’s friend, after all), toweled her hands, and tried to inject some confidence into her stride as she approached the front door.

In Seattle, every meeting had been tinged in desperation, in grasping and gripping hands that didn’t want to let go; and shared, searching looks that asked _are you really okay_ and _what have you seen_ and _what can I do_. The act of coming apart and then crashing back into each other over and over again infused Dina with a new anxiety that reared its head every time Ellie left a building, and worsened to a horribly expected thing as she would leave the farmhouse more and more. 

That was one terrible relief of leaving the farmhouse that left her gasping once she realized it - she didn’t have to wait for Ellie to come back.

So now, the practice of inviting Ellie into Dina’s own space - instead of pulling her in desperately, instead of waiting for her to come occupy a space that was hers - felt fully alien to Dina, felt like something that made her nerves crackle. 

The front door swung inward when she opened it, and Dina walked backwards as it did, both to avoid giving the impression that she expected any kind of physical contact, and to try and get the usual “come in” rituals of inviting someone into her house over and done with.

She decisively looked anywhere but Ellie’s eyes as she stood back and - yes, there she was, and now she was inside Dina’s house, and this was really happening, and what the fuck was Dina doing? What the fucking _fuck_? Her life had been alright, even good, and what the fuck was she doing now?

 _I’m not gonna do this again_.

“Hi.” Ellie’s voice was small, but the timbre of her voice and the shape she cut in Dina’s vision was still novel enough in its familiarity that Dina’s heart was in her throat again.

 _That’s up to you_.

She shoved it back down, nodding perfunctorily back behind her. “We’re back in the kitchen.” Dina tried not to stare as Ellie’s hands went to her own throat to pull her raincoat’s zipper down.

Right on cue, JJ babbled from the kitchen - followed by Astrid’s response - and Ellie froze where she stood, one arm still raised where she had placed her coat on the coat rack. Her eyes found Dina’s.

“Can I -”

“Take off your shoes first.”

Dina walked back into the kitchen and, judging by the shuffling and grunting from behind her, Ellie was attempting to separate her shoes from her body as fast as possible.

“You’ve got quite a little sous chef,” Astrid said as Dina entered the kitchen, to find JJ playing with a ring of measuring spoons. Astrid herself was bent over a bowl, trying to extract as much zest from the two oranges she had supplied.

“I keep trying to tell him to go into medicine, but he just won’t listen.” Astrid chuckled as Dina lifted JJ out of his high chair. She buried her nose against his hair for a second, still smelling of that baby sweetness, and smiled softly as he grasped for the collar of her shirt. 

She prayed she was doing the right thing.

Ellie had stopped on the threshold to the kitchen, as if going further warranted special permission.

“Say hi to Mummy,” Dina murmured, and Ellie visibly stiffened. If Astrid was confused at all at who Ellie was to JJ, she didn’t say anything, didn’t even look up from her zesting.

Dina had warned her that Ellie was coming over, and Astrid - to her credit - hadn’t pried any further than a cursory “You’ll be okay?” When Dina had nodded, that seemed good enough for her.

And Ellie was absolutely breathless. “Hi, Potato.” Her voice cracked as she folded JJ into her arms. She looked like she held the whole fucking world in her arms, and it made a flash of rage course through Dina, that it had taken all this time for Ellie to understand how important all of this was.

“We’ll be in the kitchen for a few more hours,” Dina said, almost fighting to speak around the lump in her throat. “Most of his toys are in the living room.”

Was she being too curt? Too short? It didn’t seem to matter to Ellie, who just nodded and swayed with JJ in her arms, whispering against his hair and looking lighter than Dina had seen her since she had come back.

“You’re so big, buddy.”

“He walks and talks, too.” Dina could hardly keep the venom from her voice, but regretted it when she saw the wonder in Ellie’s face. “Well, sort of. He’s getting there.”

“I missed so much,” Ellie murmured absently as if in disbelief, and Dina’s face pulled and she fought not to collapse in on herself and cry right there - at the unfairness of it all, at how much she wanted to do over, at how desperately she wanted to go back. And some part of her was angry again - angry that Ellie would make her feel so vulnerable now, during this first meeting, when she was just testing the waters again. It wasn’t _supposed_ to be this hard.

She knew she couldn’t look directly at Ellie right now, couldn’t absorb all of her wonder and pain right now. She would collapse. She had to take care of herself first.

“I love you, Potato. I’ll never leave again, my little Potato.” Ellie’s voice was soft, her smile watery, and she scrubbed her face on her sleeve while JJ gripped the front of her shirt.

She turned away with the excuse of looking at the cookbook that was open on the counter, to surreptitiously wipe at her eyes. She hoped that Ellie would have vanished into the living room by the time she turned back. For someone who was so protective of her own emotions, Ellie could be surprisingly candid with JJ.

The recipe for the orange cake was not labor intensive, and the living room was immediately adjacent to the kitchen, giving Dina an unobscured view of Ellie settling on the rug with JJ, who immediately toddled over to pick up a block and hand it to Ellie. They cut a pleasant, domestic figure, seated there while the curtains billowed lightly in a soft breeze.

When Ellie played with JJ, she really, really played - really put her whole self into it, regardless of the absurd premise. Whole environments and scenarios came to life under her hands and imagination. That was a holdover from their time at the farmhouse, where Ellie seemed to easily get lost in the little worlds that she built for JJ - Dina would come in from working the garden or grooming Japan and would find them both engrossed in an imaginary world on the living room floor.

Dina saw that now that JJ was more mobile, it added a new element. He seemed intent on handing her things - blocks, a ball, Ollie - and she turned each of them over in her hands as if each was a precious gift, deserving of her undivided attention and nothing less.

At first it was easy to concentrate on the tasks that Astrid delegated to her. They had been in the midst of a decently enthralling conversation before Ellie had interrupted them - Astrid had something of a long distance relationship going with a trader from Idaho, and Astrid was trying to work up the nerve to ask her to come to Jackson for a more permanent setup. 

But to Dina’s dismay, the sounds of JJ’s babbles and laughter, and Ellie’s encouragement and playful gasps of wonder, drifted up around her, and suddenly she could think of nothing else.

She ached with the familiarity of it all, half-expecting that one second she would look up and be in the kitchen of their farmhouse, lit soft in the setting sun; and JJ would toddle around the corner, one block in hand, Ellie striding after him; and Dina would act exasperated at them interrupting her while she was cooking, and playfully admonish them while Ellie herded JJ out of the kitchen; and Ellie would turn round at the last second and pull Dina close and kiss her breathless…

“Ugh, I forgot my vanilla. Do you have any?”

Just like that, Astrid brought her crashing back to the present.

Dina’s voice was thick when she replied - “I’ll check” - and she was glad that Astrid was deeply concentrating on weighing something so that Dina could retreat into the walk-in pantry and close the door behind her as softly as was possible.

And then she was enclosed in a soft darkness, and her face crumpled and she clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle her sobs.

“Dina? Did you find the vanilla?”

Dina flicked on the light and tried to smooth over any hitches in her voice. “Yes, one second.” She wiped at her face with her sleeve, plucked a bottle from a shelf, and took another deep breath before leaving the pantry. 

If Astrid noticed any change in her demeanor, she didn’t vocalize anything, and the cake came together easily.

“I’ve made a lot of good cakes in my time, but this one...is _batter_ …”

“Oof, Astrid, really?” Dina chuckled, and then Ellie’s voice rose up from the room over - “Weak, Astrid!”

“Like you could do any better!” Astrid shot back, grinning, as she continued packing up her ingredients. Astrid, thankfully, was neat - Dina swore that her kitchen was sparkling after every time she had her over. It certainly cut some time out of her weekly chores.

She had finished helping Astrid pack up the cake when Ellie appeared, leaning casually against the wall that separated the kitchen and living room. JJ toddled in front of her, intent on going to Dina. She picked him up, holding him close. “Do you need help?”

Astrid shook her head - “Think I can handle this one.”

“Who’s this one for?”

“Jim’s anniversary. You know how he gets.”

“Oh jeeze, he’s been a pain in the barn recently. I guess that adds context.” 

“Yep. Yikes.” Astrid shrugged, and Dina’s eyes darted between Astrid and Ellie, struck by how easily they talked to each other, and again all the things that she didn’t know about Ellie - she was working at the stables? What was she doing? How often was she there? 

Dina held JJ closer, almost to ground herself, as she watched Ellie and Astrid leave.

She didn’t notice until later that evening that, although she was certain she had opened them, all of the windows in the living room had been closed and latched.

* * *

Letting Ellie watch JJ had opened up some kind of floodgate. Dina didn’t know exactly what was coming out, or how often it flowed freely, but regardless it was something new, and in parts it terrified and thrilled her.

“So what have you been up to?”

August’s heat was suffocating, though never as bad as New Mexico, and Dina felt almost self-conscious of the sheen of sweat on her forehead, and even more self-conscious at the question she lobbed clumsily at Ellie.

If Ellie was surprised, she didn’t show it. “Got roped into helping with fall shots at the barn,” she said with a smile. “Not all of my patients are...cooperative.”

“I hope you aren’t talking about my dear Japan.”

“Japan was perfectly well-behaved!” Ellie said, raising her hands. “It’s the babies that are the problem. _Some_ of them tried to take a chunk out of me...I’ll be having a word with Jim about how he’s starting them.” She rolled her eyes, and the action was so casual that it shook Dina off of her guard.

But her new favorite thing - although, of course, she could hardly admit it to herself - was watching Ellie with JJ.

Whenever Ellie watched him, she was quick to ask Dina when she was expecting to come back, so that JJ could be fed, or asleep, or otherwise “all set”, as Ellie put it, before Dina arrived. And as much as Dina appreciated the initiative, it gave her hardly any time to see the two of them together.

So she started...not _lying_ about when she’d be coming back, but stretching the truth. Maybe she forgot something in the house and she just had to run back to get it. Maybe she was worried that she’d left the oven on. 

Dina didn’t know if Ellie believed her, but she never pressed Dina about it - and it gave Dina a few blessed moments to see them together.

Ellie seemed intent on teaching JJ the names of the planets, although Dina had no idea why she relied on such an apparently inaccurate mnemonic device if she spent half of her time babbling about how inadequate it was -

“‘My very educated mother just served us nice pizzas’, I mean, are you kidding me? I guess the asteroid belt and the heliosphere and the Oort cloud just don’t exist...I mean, okay, I guess the Oort cloud is _hypothetical_ -”

Every time Dina let her in felt like another choice, and one over which Dina actually had control. It wasn’t the wild, emotional chaos that she had expected. It was, in fact, steady and predictable - two things that she realized she had never associated with Ellie. 

But what was newest and most unexpected was when Ellie started pushing back on her. Dina tried to contain her shock when Ellie walked up to her one afternoon, tugging on her remaining fingers and not meeting Dina's eyes but approaching her nonetheless. 

Dina saw uncertainty behind her eyes and fear flashed through her. “Hi.”

“Hey. So…” She took a deep breath, apparently trying to steel herself. “So. I can’t watch JJ tonight.”

Dina’s brain immediately scrambled to see if she could alter her plans to find someone else. “That’s fine. What’s up?”

Ellie rocked back and forth on her feet, not meeting Dina’s eyes. “I had...I had a nightmare? And I...I can’t...”

She wasn’t going to get much farther, Dina could tell. “Hey, it’s okay,” Dina replied, and Ellie seemed to sag, some tension going out of her body.

“Thanks, Dina.”

It was a far, far cry from the Ellie who came back from Seattle.

What wasn’t a far cry was for Dina to come back late from a quarterly guild meeting to the sight of Ellie asleep on the couch, and JJ asleep on her chest, both of their chests rising and falling in easy, comfortable rhythms. 

Dina froze in the doorframe. It was like she had stepped into a parallel world - one where all those awful things hadn’t happened, where everything was safe and warm and happy - and it tugged at her heart…

She tried to make a little noise as she closed the door, something non-threatening that would wake Ellie up without startling her - but as she turned back around she saw that Ellie was already awake, though still prone on the couch.

“Sorry,” Ellie murmured thickly as she sat up, still cradling JJ against her chest. “Didn’t sleep well last night.”

“It’s okay. Does anything help with that?” Dina shrugged off her coat and joined her on the couch, a good foot of distance between them. She reached over to smooth some of the wrinkles from JJ’s shirt.

“If there’s something, I haven’t found it yet,” Ellie replied. 

“I never had dreams when I got high.”

Ellie chuckled. “Now there’s something.”

“Not that I do that much anymore. Wouldn’t want folks to think I’m a neglectful parent.” Dina chuckled lightly to herself, but watched the smile slough off of Ellie’s face in dismay. She cleared her throat and reached for JJ, as if trying to punctuate the end of the conversation.

“Someone had a long day, hmm?” She folded JJ into her arms and smiled as he nuzzled closer.

“That’s what happens when you spend hours pretending to be dinosaurs knocking down buildings,” Ellie supplied, trying to drag herself back from wherever she had gone. She still had one hand on JJ’s back, just fingertips now, and then she pulled away. Dina buried her nose in JJ’s hair, partially as an excuse to avoid watching Ellie as she went to grab her coat.

“Dina.”

“Mhmm?” Dina stood, holding JJ closer to her chest. Ellie stood near the front door, tracing the stumps on her left hand. When she met Dina’s gaze, her eyes were watery and wide, and her voice was thick with emotion.

“I can’t thank you enough.”

For one fevered second, Dina thought about closing the distance between them and taking Ellie’s hand in her own, and pressing it over her pulse point that was as frantic as a jackrabbit, as if to say _This is what you do to me_ and _Even after all this time, I_ need _you_ and _I didn’t memorize your shape and sound and taste for nothing_.

Instead, Dina sucked in a deep breath, and tried to bring herself back down to earth. 

“It’s fine. I’m glad you got to see him.” 

Dina watched Ellie walk away in the low light of the evening, and felt like part of her heart was going with her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some references sprinkled here and there:
> 
> \- Raisin cakes were traditionally eggless, since they became popular in World War II, when eggs, milk, and butter were in short supply.
> 
> \- I first heard Astrid's batter pun in an episode of [The Haunting of Bly Manor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Haunting_of_Bly_Manor).
> 
> Cheers, friends!


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops, these chapters just keep getting longer and longer...

The days slowly grew shorter, and Ellie feared them for that. 

She tried to make it a habit of packing her days as full as possible. She’d found that staying idle too easily tempted her depression, and she feared the black hole that was her bed in the day - convinced that she would lay down and then stand back up and the entire day would have passed, the world would have spun on, and she’d have missed it all. 

It seemed like she could make herself tired at any point in the day, just by laying down - this resulted in frustratingly inopportune naps. Once she’d only had rotations in the morning, and she’d gone home to lay down for a minute after a restless night. She’d woken up at seven in the evening, with the sun going down, feeling groggy and lost and sick.

If she wasn’t tired, she was distracted. She knew what she needed to focus on right this instant, it was right there in front of her, clear as day - and she couldn’t make herself do it. The planned patrol rotations that Maria had asked her to help with sat on her desk, waiting for her to review. It wouldn’t take longer than twenty minutes. Or maybe thirty, if she was conservative. 

She left them there.

The worst part was that she knew why. The prospect of just doing something unpleasant was enough to make her want to shut down. 

She wished immediately and absurdly for one of those montages from the movies that she and Joel would watch together - where the protagonist, faced by some monumental task, somehow finds it in themselves to commit to the menial, tedious work of _getting better_ ; and then time flies by (with all the cinematic parts highlighted, of course): they’re working hard and struggling, but they grit their teeth and get through it; they’re knocked back down and they get back up; and finally, finally, they’re at the end of the road, and they can hardly recognize who they were before.

It was like her realization about Joel had stripped away a layer of decaying, dying flesh - and now Ellie saw, clearly for perhaps the first time, the extent of the damage that sat beneath it, finally bared to the air.

Ellie shivered, walking with a piece of toast in hand. It was still early in the season, but a slight chill snuck under her collar nonetheless, and she made a mental note to dig out some of her heavier clothes from whatever box they sat in. The sky was high and tight and carried promises of snow.

She scarfed down the rest of the toast as the stables came into view and pulled on her work gloves. The lead that morning - Tim? Tom? He was new, and Ellie hadn’t bothered asking his name - nodded at her as she entered the stables, and she nodded cursorily in reply. She hefted a pitchfork and turned on her heel, walking down the barn aisle.

Two hours later, Ellie leaned that pitchfork against one sliding stall door and shrugged off her coat, now feeling fully overheated as the morning warmed up. But at least stalls were done for the morning, and she removed her work gloves and flexed her hands and rolled her shoulders around, grumbling at the ache that had built along her upper back. 

She thought of the words of her therapist, how self-compassion was like a muscle, and sometimes you had to fake it - go through the rote exercises, no matter how useless and menial they seemed - to get to a point where anything made an impact.

No, there was nothing glamorous or romantic about this kind of work. 

And the closer they got to winter - the sight of so much pain and despair - the more and more unnerved Ellie became. Her nightmares got worse, to the point where her therapist suggested sleeping pills. Ellie still hadn’t taken her up on this, and had to restrain herself from leaving the session when it was suggested. She was still jittery and jumpy during the day. And she did her best to pack her days full of activities, although she didn’t know if she was doing this to exhaust herself, or to keep her mind fixated on the present, or both. 

Tulip pressed her nose against the bars of her stall and nickered. Ellie slid her stall door open, checked her water buckets, and patted her pockets for mints as Tulip lipped at her sleeves. “Sorry, girl,” Ellie sighed, hefting Tulip’s halter over one shoulder. “Empty-handed.” But, no, she had left a little bag of mints on her bedside table. Ellie cursed her own forgetfulness. 

Well, what else was new. Ellie knelt down beside Tulip’s right hind leg and quickly undid the wrap and bandage there, palpating the fine bones and ligaments underneath for heat and swelling. Things had improved today, and Ellie sighed in relief. She hated dipping into the stables’ supply of phenylbutazone - undoubtedly it would become more and more sparse as winter dragged on, but she itched at the thought of mismanaging Tulip’s pain.

She clipped on Tulip’s halter, shouldered the sliding stall door open, and set a course for the barn’s small indoor arena. She knew it would be deserted at this hour, with patrols gone.

The arena dirt passed under her feet as she walked, keeping her eyes down, Tulip beside her. They made big figures together, aimless circles. Occasionally Tulip lingered behind Ellie, and Ellie would smile as she felt Tulip nibbling at her shoulder. 

But otherwise, she let her brain detach itself as best it could, hoping it would float off to somewhere tranquil. Sometimes it still rolled into something - a noise outside would startle her, or a yell would go up outside of the barn’s walls, and Ellie would have to rein herself in and tell herself to keep walking. 

After fifteen minutes or so, Ellie returned to the barn and gave Tulip a good grooming for her trouble. She knew the mare was antsy and would be even more of a handful under saddle once her prescribed stall rest had ended, and Ellie crossed her fingers that she wouldn’t do anything worse to herself than what she presumed was from a superficial scuffle with one of her pasturemates. 

Once Tulip’s coat gleamed, Ellie rewrapped her and led her back to her stall, scratching the mare behind her ears before latching the door closed. “One more day, yeah?” Tulip snorted in response. 

At least some pain had predictable timelines in this world.

Ellie skirted the forge on her way out - she knew Jim had an early start today, and she didn’t want to give her mind any opportunities to sink into its dark pits, not when it was still so early in the day. 

The memory still stung, of Jim’s bright brown eyes going sad with his frown when she told him that she wouldn’t be able to help out anymore. She knew he needed it - there were almost continuous _ad hoc_ requests on Jackson’s farrier, with horses pulling shoes now and then out on patrol, and all the working animals needing to be reshod every six weeks or so; not to mention maintenance and veterinary work. If there was anyone in Jackson who needed to train up an apprentice (or, better yet, replacement), it was Jim.

Ellie had been thrilled at first, not long after returning from the farmhouse, when Maria had suggested she fill this gap. She felt energized, high, like she had progressed so far in such little time. She could do this. She could fucking _do_ this. 

Even the sight of Dina in Jackson didn’t sting as much as it once had.

And then she felt incredibly stupid in retrospect. 

Her first flashback in the forge happened not twenty minutes into her first day, when Jim was showing her how he liked to adjust the shape of a shoe. He struck the hot metal with a hammer once and Ellie was back in the basement of the chalet, screaming and crying.

She had come to with Jim’s hands on her shoulders and his concerned face filling her vision. 

The next day, Ellie had almost cried to her therapist when recounting the attack. She could handle sixty-percent of the job - pulling shoes and trimming and cleaning out the hoof and doing assessments. But when it came to wielding the tools, she cowered. 

It swirled up around her, the thick fog of her pain, unending. How could she have thought it was gone?

“I had this big breakthrough and now it’s like it didn’t even _matter_.”

“What makes you think that it doesn’t matter?”

“Because I’m still seeing him! I’m still seeing this shit! I’m still so fucking _sensitive!_ ”

Part of Ellie had wanted to scoff at her therapist’s suggestion that she take on other related duties at the barn - as if that wasn’t a cop-out, a workaround, a fucking excuse. She could do this. She’d just grit her teeth and _do_ this.

And then Ellie realized that she had been looking for an excuse to not share anything with Jim - to act as if her wanting to help at the forge was a fluke, and she actually wanted nothing to do with the barn or with his work. 

For some reason, in her mind, telling Jim meant that things would get worse - and Ellie was tired of things getting worse. 

But she told Jim, and things didn’t get worse. Things didn’t blow up in her face, or destroy her life. Things just...were. 

Maria accepted Ellie’s ask without question, and put her on one of the earlier stable rotations, the ones that were usually well into work by the time patrol went out in the morning. And Jim didn’t hate her, didn’t think she was useless - he still waved at her in the barn, and she acknowledged him even as she took increasingly circuitous routes when he was working. 

Ellie pondered the likelihood of Dina letting JJ ride Tulip with her as she walked back down the main drag of town. The sun was fully up now, the air suffused with that dry, crisp autumnal scent. 

She hadn’t gotten up early enough to paint that morning, and it wore on her - the knowledge that soon she would wake up in pitch darkness, and fall asleep to that too. She shook herself.

It wasn’t her easel that drew her gaze when she returned home, but the guitar she had propped up against the far counter. The angle of the sun threw it into shadow, and she tried not to look at it as she stepped into her bathroom and washed her hands. 

For all her forced casualness, it still felt like a placeholder, for all the things she used to and was supposed to be. 

The fretboard was plain, thankfully - Ellie had made sure of this when the family that now occupied Joel’s house had asked her if she wanted it. 

She sat on her unmade bed and ran her hands over the body. Her broken attempts to play at the farmhouse still sat heavy in her mind - how warped the song had sounded, how incomplete. She already knew it was in tune - she tuned it every couple of days, although she stopped herself before playing anything - and ran her left hand up the fretboard.

E minor came easy, though without the technically correct fingering. It wasn’t the first chord that Joel had taught her - that honor belonged to C, A, G, and E major, all in one session, his eye-rolling at her ambition be damned. She knew he was exasperated, by the way his mouth pulled slightly and his eyebrows climbed higher on his forehead - but he talked her through the positions for each chord anyways. She could still remember the weak, tinny sound that emerged from the instrument when she tried the first few times.

“You gotta strum with some _force_ , kiddo.” She returned his easy smile with a grimace.

“It feels awkward.”

“It’s gonna feel awkward for a bit. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

“What?”

“Ahh...nevermind.”

“Did Sarah want to learn guitar?” Maybe it was too prying, but she leaned into it anyways. 

“Maybe. She had been getting into older rock stuff, from the seventies and all.”

“Older than you?”

“ _Yes_ , older than me. Alright, next one.”

Taking his words to mind, Ellie strummed a little harder than was perhaps necessary - and a rich, _loud_ chord trembled out into the room. “ _Sick_ ,” Ellie gasped. 

Joel guided her through transitioning from one chord to the other, placing her fingers and moving them precisely. It brought out a fresh string of curses as she struggled to make her body and her mind sync up. “Dammit…” _A...C...A...C..._

“It’ll take some time, kiddo.” 

She took a deep breath and made herself try again, feeling through the depth of her movements, through the snags and bottlenecks, where her brain jumped ahead of her fingers, where her fingers jumped ahead of her brain.

It was slow, tedious work. It was dry, breaking it down to its bare bones, its very fundamentals. And below it all simmered a new anxiety, one that she had been aware of for a while now, but hadn’t wanted to look at clearly: what if, after all the pain and horror that she had felt and wrought, she lost her music? 

“If you were teaching someone, what would you say to them?”

Ellie’s scoff came immediately. “I don’t teach.”

“Humor me.”

 _Humor me_. That was something that had been coming up more and more recently. Ellie knew what it was - she was being asked to think outside of her regular boundaries, of her regular assumptions of impending doom and failure. It didn’t make it any easier, though, to look at all the work that was left to be done.

“I’d say that...that they have to start somewhere, and that’s better than not starting.” The words felt dry and ineffectual on her mouth.

“Then why are you treating yourself any differently?”

Ellie buried her face in her hands.

“Because...I don’t know why…”

She had an answer, of course - she just didn’t want to voice it. Or maybe it hadn’t become clear to her until now.

“Because this is what I’m _supposed_ to be able to do.”

“Do you really think so? Do you think you listen to yourself?”

“...Meaning?” She couldn’t help the exasperation that leached into her voice. 

“Do you think you know what you really need?”

The thought nagged at Ellie as she sat on the floor of Dina’s living room and watched JJ toddle towards her, Ollie in hand.

Did she know what she needed? It was easy, for some people. Like JJ - he needed food and shelter and warmth and companionship and love. And, technically, Ellie had all of those things too. But still, she floundered. Still, she watched herself struggle, and part of her rolled her eyes. It rose in her like an old reflex, something that she didn’t realize she’d hoped would go away until she heard it again - _we’ve been through this before_ , _we’ve been through this_ …

JJ plopped down on his backside, and Ellie helped him to stand again. 

They’d spent a good amount of their time in the living room, alternately playing and reading. Now Ellie followed JJ into the kitchen, where he gripped onto one of the legs of the island with his pudgy hands. 

“Where are you goin’ buddy?”

A couple plates, dusted with crumbs, had been left on the countertop; automatically, Ellie turned on the sink and scrubbed at them. She worked over a particularly stubborn spot for a minute.

“Did your momma forget to wash her dishes, buddy?” She’d take JJ’s gurgle and exclamation of “Plate!” as a yes, and she grinned down at him.

Ellie set the plates in the drying rack and toweled her hands, and JJ babbled and led her to the fridge. Ellie smiled softly at the numerous drawings that papered it, in bright, garish colors. She straightened a few, moving their magnets around slightly, and appraised one. It had large swaths of green and blue that bled into purple, a wide gradient across the paper.

“Good use of color, Potato,” she said approvingly. JJ grinned up at her and raised his arms, and she bent down and scooped him up.

Dina’s knitting and embroidery found some semblance of organization under her free hand. Ellie noted with a smile that she still color-coded her yarn. She let her fingers brush over the mezuzah on the doorframe of the craft room as she exited.

She found her way to the living room again, JJ squirming to be put down at this point. He tugged her down with him, and Ellie let herself indulge for the briefest second that she was home.

* * *

Falling in love with Dina was both very easy and very hard.

It was easy because it was _Dina_ , bright and loud and beautiful. Ellie couldn’t remember the last time she’d met a person like that, maybe not since Riley - someone who didn’t just survive in this horrifying world but _lived_ in it, and made sure others lived too. Dina clung to things that Ellie knew older, more hardened people would have dismissed or derided. 

It made Joel’s lie sting a little less - just the knowledge that Dina lived and the world kept turning, and maybe it was worth living in. Dina would tug her along and for once Ellie felt loose and, dare she say it, _happy_. Just from time to time.

And it was hard, because...because it was _Dina_. Bright, loud, beautiful. Everything Ellie was not.

It made Joel’s lie sting all the more - the knowledge that Dina was different from her, that she was free and flightful and unburdened, that she could slip in and out of others’ orbits with so little effort; while Ellie felt shipped and packaged and pushed around for all her life, and immensely awkward in the open space that was Jackson.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Dina had said, one side of her face lit in soft orange by the light of the setting sun that crept in through the slats on the barn roof. Ellie watched Dina’s fingers hold the joint, small and delicate, and shook her head minutely from side to side.

Her lungs still stung from how hard she’d ridden back to Jackson, as if by putting on enough speed she could outrun the dark, suffocating truth that had finally been revealed. She knew she was stupid, she knew she’d have to overnight somewhere - and she picked the most unfriendly looking stopping points she could - the hollow of a tree, pressing her back up against the bark as she fought sleep; the shore of a rushing river, where the continuous crash of the rapids slipped into her mind and left her exhausted and pushed everything else out for a few blessed hours. 

By the time she got back to Jackson, she felt so consumed, like something had chewed her up and swallowed her and spit her out, and now her parts were healing all wrong - scar tissue worked over misshapen flesh and left out-of-place, sticky, monstrous things.

It felt wrong to even be back behind its walls, to strip Shimmer of her tack and hose her down and walk her around until her breathing had evened; to sponge mud and dirt and dried sweat from Shimmer’s bridle and saddle; to nod at the stablehands who greeted her bright and loud and asked her when they’d see her in the barn next. These were things that normal people did; normal, unburdened people who knew how to be happy without needing to spring up from some deeper purpose, without tying themselves to it so closely that it became their very lifeblood, their very reason for living.

And then there was Dina, who saw pain on Ellie’s face immediately, who took her hand and Ellie wanted to kneel down in the dirt and cry - because Dina was everything she would not be, could never be; and because Dina was everything she wanted, in a deep, thrumming way that scared her, that made her look away from her big, brown eyes and block out her sweet, dark voice. She slipped into every crack in Ellie’s life, like honey - like something that would fill those cracks and finally make Ellie whole.

“No. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay.” Dina’s voice was soft in the darkness. “I’m here.”

“I know.”

 _I love you_.

* * *

There were still some bright spots, of course.

Ellie would have scoffed at the term before, _bright spots_ \- but she’d told her therapist she would start focusing on them more, or at least trying to.

And maybe her friends were in on it, or the universe was in on it in some ridiculous cosmic sense. Cat bequeathed her a stack of small canvases - “To brighten up your space a little,” she supposed, to Ellie’s obligatory annoyance. Weekly, like clockwork, Astrid knocked on her door and left her whatever baked good she had been working on. When Ellie pushed back and said she should save it for patrollers, Astrid just shrugged, with a simple “No worries.”

For all her exasperation, Ellie knew exactly what made her approach Dina at the grocer. She might shrug her shoulders at normalcy in public, but in private that was exactly what she craved - those conversations about nothing, those tiny invisible ties that bound her to another person, simply by a function of them circling so closely to each other.

It took feeling Dina’s arms around her body to remind Ellie that Dina owed her absolutely nothing - and to remind her of the magnitude of what she had lost. Its closeness made her sob all the harder.

A new desperation thrummed in her, a desperation to problem-solve. Ellie could see, with horrible clarity, the things that hadn’t worked for their relationship at the farmhouse, the things that had actively degraded it. _I know this now_ , she wanted to say to Dina. _I know what I did wrong. Let me show you that I can be better_.

But she had no right to go to Dina like that. 

And as much as she loved seeing her son again, the mechanism by which it happened forced a casualness around her interactions with Dina that made Ellie feel sick. There was so much unsaid between them, and she felt like it was piling up in her throat every time Dina approached her in town, with that casual, easy happiness in her eyes.

“Hey, I’ve got an early morning on Saturday. Do you want to be on breakfast duty?”

“Oh.” Ellie fumbled with the sleeve of Joel’s jacket.

“I know you’re not an early riser, but you were asking for more time, so…” Dina trailed off and shrugged.

“Yeah, I can do that. As long as I get enough sleep.”

Dina smiled softly. “Well let me know. I can always have Astrid come by too.”

Ellie nodded. “And then drop him off with Susan?”

“Yeah.”

The exchange was quick and cursory and casual and _jarring_ \- one second Dina was in front of her, all easy smiles; and then she was walking down the road, waving at passerby, going on with her life.

Ellie couldn’t help but wonder if part of her was risking all her progress for something that wasn’t possible anymore.

It didn’t help that she couldn’t stop her guilt from crashing into her from time to time, especially early in her days of seeing JJ again.

He was so innocent and unknowing. She had been terrified that he would just forget her, be fearful of her, scream when she reached for him; and part of her had expected it because that was what she deserved. Dina was right - they could have died, and she had left them both out there.

But he accepted her in that way that children dole out love and forgiveness so easily - uncomplicated, unburdened, and Ellie knew that this was the first and likely the last time in her life that this would happen to her. She swore to herself - and to him, quietly, as they played with blocks in Dina’s house, passing them back and forth - that she would never let that be an option ever again.

It made her heart ache, to think of how viciously Dina had come to her defense back at the farmhouse - the places she must have reached inside herself to levy her anger at a person she knew was Ellie’s family. Or maybe it had been easy for her - and that made it all the worse.

It didn’t help that she had been wracked by a panic attack earlier that day, when the sight of the rabbit’s blood took her back to _that_ winter - and she was fourteen again, and alone, and watching Joel die. 

She came to with her back against the rough bark of a tree, tears still hot on her face, heart in her throat, gripping for Dina’s words in her mind - _Home. You’re home_.

She was learning rapidly that home was no safe-haven.

Dina had practically vibrated in rage even after Tommy had loped away from the farmhouse, as she lowered herself down to the couch and buried her face in her hands and inhaled shakily.

JJ cooed in Ellie’s arms, and Ellie felt weak, overcome, lifeless - like a strong gust of wind would blow her away. She sat down next to Dina, pressed against her side, JJ in her lap. 

“Baby?”

Dina dropped her hands from her face, and Ellie saw tear tracks running down her cheeks. She palmed Ellie’s knee.

“You don’t owe him anything, okay?” Her voice cracked as she spoke, and for a second Ellie thought that she could crack right under it.

“I know,” she whispered, and the fear rose in her again, like Dina acknowledging it was enough to make it real, to make it unbearable - that she would leave. She had to. She had no choice.

And then Dina’s hands cupped her face and pulled her close - and Dina kissed her, sweet and desperate. And Ellie knew that when she pulled away, she would be lost.

* * *

It all crept up on her: how her old habits and worries slipped back into her life. Being over at Dina’s place was like its own kind of trigger, because now she was around her family again - and loving them was its own reminder that they were in danger, that they could die next.

Such thoughts were at the forefront of her mind each time she found a window’s latches under her hands, each time she traced the wood of a windowsill. Dina’s voice came to her from far away -

“Ellie, it’s still nice out. You can leave the windows open.”

She could still play along sometimes, under the guise of the weather. “There’s a storm coming,” she’d say. Or, “The wind is supposed to get really bad in a couple of hours.”

Dina’s expression was more than enough to make her think back to the farmhouse - when it had been a constant, that open question on her face, with so much love and so much uncertainty.

Were they just cycling back through the same pathologies, over and over again?

It finally came to the point where she felt like she had to confront Dina. Ellie knew she owed her an explanation - and, failing that, perhaps she owed her a look into what she was thinking.

“It isn’t safe.”

Ellie watched Dina’s eyebrows knit together, and felt shame and anxiety pooling in her stomach.

“What do you mean, it isn’t safe?”

It was obvious that Dina was reining herself in, and Ellie’s heart ached, at what she was making Dina do - explaining this to her like she was a child, like she wasn’t an adult who had killed and maimed, an adult who had tried and failed to make a life with someone she loved. 

Ellie hated herself in that moment, hated how Dina raised her voice and she raised hers in return. Eventually, she shook her head and stepped out of Dina’s gaze, striding home.

The next morning, Ellie didn’t go directly into Dina’s house. She just sheepishly kicked at a rock outside, waiting for Dina to turn her away. 

But Dina met her there. She walked down the porch and came to her, right up in her space.

“Hey,” Dina said. Her voice was soft. “Hey, I’m sorry about yesterday.”

Ellie cupped the back of her neck with her hand. “Me too.”

“That was...cruel of me. You just wanted us to be safe.”

Ellie bit her lip. “You just wanted everything to be...normal.”

Dina took a deep breath, and Ellie could tell that she was reaching for a deeper explanation. 

“...I don’t want him to grow up afraid.” Ellie nodded.

Dina continued. “But I want him to know what’s out there.”

“I know.”

“Did that...did I…” Ellie took a shaking breath, and raised her eyes to meet Dina’s. “Did that remind you of the farmhouse?” 

Dina’s eyes left hers, dropping momentarily, and then looked up again. “I know you were just trying to keep us safe then too.”

“It was stupid, I -”

“Hey.” Dina’s hand was on her arm. It felt like fire through her sleeve. “It’s okay. There’s real stuff out there, it’s not stupid. It’s just...you can let some places be safe. I want...I want my home to be safe.”

Ellie nodded.

“But...but that doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t know anything about what’s out there.”

“Yeah.”

“Give it a couple of years?” Dina’s smile was soft, and Ellie felt like she couldn’t breathe. She nodded. 

“Okay...okay.” Dina squeezed her arm, blinking rapidly as she looked away.

That afternoon, Ellie declined Dina’s offer to stay for lunch, citing a stomachache. A few minutes later, she rapped her knuckles rapidly on a door, ignoring the pain shooting through her stumps.

Alice appeared in the doorway.

“Can I talk to you?”

“What’s going on?”

Maybe Ellie found her way into Alice’s living room, maybe not; all she knew was that, suddenly and unbidden, Ellie was telling Alice how she felt about Dina - how much she missed her, how her eyes raked over every detail of her house when she was watching JJ, how she felt awkward and disarmed and nervous around her, and how - so, so deeply - she wanted to see Dina happy, she wanted to see Dina smile, she wanted Dina carefree and relaxed and confident in her safety and so, so loved.

How she wanted Dina back.

A long silence followed. 

“Can I ask you something?” Alice’s tone was low. Ellie’s nerves jumped, as if she had just realized all the information she had laid bare - and now Alice had an opportunity to refute all of it, to tell her that her desires were wrong, and selfish, and made her a bad person -

“Yeah.”

“Why did you leave her?”

“Tommy came to the house and -”

“No, no. Why did _you_ leave her?”

Ellie sucked her bottom lip between her teeth. She found the words slowly. 

“I wasn’t done…I thought I had to finish something. I was wrong.” 

Ellie had never told Alice the exact details of her leaving, and she was relieved to see that Alice went on without pressing her.

“I won’t tell you it’s a _bad_ idea.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Ellie said dryly, and Alice’s resulting eyeroll was such a _Dina_ response that it gave Ellie whiplash.

“Dude. I won’t talk about whether or not it’s a good idea, but...if you want this, you need to regain her trust. You two got together after you were friends for, what, years?”

“Yeah,” Ellie breathed. 

“Then even more than that kind of trust,” Alice continued. “She has a child. She’s not gonna be looking for some quick fling.”

“I’m not -”

“I never said you were. I’m just saying...outside of whether or not she even wants this, you should know what you’re getting into. It’s a commitment. It’s work.”

“So I should just go up to her and ask her to marry me.”

“I never said that, stupid.” Alice leaned back onto the couch cushions, casual. “She’s just...probably gonna be waiting for you to bolt. You need to show her otherwise.”

And it crashed into Ellie, not for the first time, how she must look to Dina - flighty and scared, unpredictable and no longer dependable. She buried her face in her hands.

Her voice cracked when she spoke. “I told her I was sorry. And I am. So, so sorry.” Alice was silent. “God, what have I _done_?” Ellie fisted her hands in her hair and moaned into her arms as the wave of her pain rocked her body - or maybe that was just Alice’s hand on her back.

Was life something that would just happen to her? She had never been able to imagine what it would be like, beyond all her pain. But Joel had seen past that, and Marlene, and Dina. 

How long would it take to claw her way back? And would she still want it all when she was finally there?

* * *

Life marched on, through fall and into the beginnings of winter.

Ellie moved up slightly in the stables. The team around her was a different group than who she had spent her time with on patrols - she had only ever observed them from afar. Though they seemed tight-knit - and she fought back her anxiety at disrupting their existing friendships and hierarchies - they seemed appreciative of her assistance, joking with her as she took down baseline respiration rates and other metrics from Jackson’s working herds.

It was at least proactive work, something that gave her days a little more meaning, and kept her from slipping away into that hazy, fuzzy darkness.

More often than not, Ellie found herself leaning into that coping mechanism more and more and more, as her work in therapy continued.

“I know I’m in love with her.”

Dina’s wide, brown eyes and soft smile were especially top-of-mind today, after Ellie had watched her flirt with some nameless stranger in town while on her way to the grocer.

Ellie remembered her own wallowing, how detached from the world she had been. “I know she can’t become a crutch.”

“Do you think there’s a...a possibility with her?”

 _A possibility_ . Ellie wanted to scoff at the term. There was no _possibility_ here anymore, nothing but the tangled, overgrown forest that was all of her failures, and the path that would not clear.

“We had a future together, and I squandered it. I ruined it. It’s the same thing I did to Joel...”

Oh, how that failing stung, still so deeply. Only Joel’s eyes, crinkled in worry, could occupy her mind as much as Dina’s were.

“Joel did hurt you -”

“And I held onto that for _so long_ ,” she interrupted, voice cracking. “I wasted so much time...”

“Did you feel ready to talk to him before the dance?”

“No.”

“Then you weren’t ready. You couldn’t have made things move faster than they were going to move.”

Impatience crested in Ellie and spilled from her mouth. “Why not? It’s important to me, I should be able to make it happen. Isn’t that why I’m here in the first place?”

There was a long, contemplative pause.

“No, Ellie. You’re not here to learn how to control every emotion and whim. You’re here to learn that you still have value, even when things happen to you, even when you make mistakes.”

Another pause, as that sunk in.

“In some sense, it sounds like you needed to go.”

Ellie frowned, shying away from that truth. “But she didn’t deserve that.”

“You’re right. She didn’t.”

Anger surged through her at the contradiction. “How...how does that happen? That shouldn’t fucking _happen_.”

“I don’t know, Ellie. I wish I knew.”

Ellie left that session feeling burdened by a heavy, thick blanket that she couldn’t shake off. She walked home, climbed into bed, and slept for the rest of the day. She awoke groggily, with a start - her bedside clock read two in the morning. She pulled out her journal and sketched angrily.

Winter greeted her with all of its deep beauty and darkness. Ellie had to restrain herself when Dina told her about her plan for JJ’s second birthday party later that weekend. _It doesn’t mean anything_ , she told herself. _It doesn’t mean anything_ …

Still, she offered to arrive early to help Dina set up, and Dina accepted it with a small smile. That day dawned bright and clear and cold, and Ellie was thankful for the fire that was already crackling when she arrived. She hugged Susan, placed her gift on the counter, and hung ribbon and streamers where she was directed.

It was as much JJ’s second birthday as it was a chance for everyone to get together in one place, outside of their obligations to the community and well-within their obligations to each other. This was, Ellie thought bitterly, another thing that Dina had gained in her leaving the farmhouse - she had often worried aloud that their friends would miss too much, of herself and Ellie and JJ, now that they no longer lived in Jackson.

Ellie shook her head and let herself be buoyed along by the light chatter and soft music that now filled the house. What had her therapist said? 

_That thought doesn’t serve you_.

Well, no - most of her thoughts didn’t do much to serve her now, did they?

When Astrid arrived with her camera, Ellie tried to keep her heart from sinking as she was prodded and positioned with the other guests. Astrid kept nudging her near Dina, who was holding JJ in her arms. Ellie couldn’t help but cringe internally. Was this really a time that should be memorialized? Would those pictures act as evidence, evidence of hers and Dina’s separation, of her failure as a parent? 

Luckily for her, JJ’s fussing soon brought the posed pictures to a standstill, and most everyone dispersed to drift into their own little cliques. 

Ellie picked the emptiest part of the ground floor that was still within the boundaries of the party - against a table that had been pushed against one wall of the living room, perpendicular to the fireplace. A small pile of brightly-colored gifts sat atop it. Ellie leaned back, letting the edge of the table bite into her low back, and nursed her bourbon.

She’d chosen the location to be discreet during the conversational body of the party, but she had forgotten who was in attendance - and in no time at all, Cat sidled up next to her.

“Cheers to two years.” She lifted her drink, arching an eyebrow. Ellie scoffed.

“Tell me about it.”

They eased into their own silence. Ellie leaned back against the table, tracing the top of her tumbler with one finger. She watched Dina dance with JJ in her arms, giggling as he made to grab the paper crown that she had placed on his head.

Without looking at Cat, she murmured, “Can I ask you something?”

Cat’s voice seemed to come from far away. “Sure.”

Ellie stared into the dregs of her drink, trying to formulate the question on her tongue. “How do you...forgive yourself?”

Now she turned to look. If Cat was surprised at the question, she didn’t know it on her face. Ellie saw now that there was a bright green ribbon stuck in Cat’s hair that she hadn’t even tried to remove - or maybe she just wasn’t aware of it - probably stuck there by JJ. Her expression was contemplative. She inclined her head.

“Pretty heavy conversation for your kid’s birthday party,” she replied, eyebrows raised.

Ellie rolled her eyes - “Come _on_ , Cat” - and Cat just raised her hands placatingly.

“Your therapist put you up to this?”

Ellie grumbled, letting slip a “Maybe.” Cat chuckled. She took a deep breath and studied the floor for a moment. The seconds dragged, and Ellie felt abruptly like they were like a rock in the middle of a river, and the current of the party - and all its soft warmth and light - flowed around them. It made her want to leave.

Finally, Cat’s voice seemed to come to her from far away.

“Okay. So. There’s a fine line between...realizing you’ve messed up, and holding it over yourself to the point where you’re basically just abusing yourself.”

“I wonder which camp I fall into,” Ellie muttered dryly.

Cat elbowed her. “Come on.” When Ellie looked up at her, she continued, gesturing absently. “At some point, you gotta be able to…” She made a dispelling motion with her hands. “...Let it go.”

“What _have_ you been smoking?” 

Cat rolled her eyes, and Ellie wondered if she would regret what came next. “I mean...here’s a more relevant example,” she started, and Ellie raised her eyes to meet hers.

Cat spoke matter-of-factly. “Once, when I was eighteen, I dated this girl who I’d just finished this _really sick_ tattoo for -”

“Cat, oh my God -”

“It’s a good story, Williams. Maybe you’ll learn something.”

Ellie sighed heavily and watched JJ try to put his paper crown on Dina’s head. “Fine,” she conceded.

“Great. So. Eighteen. New girlfriend with a super sick tattoo. Still not as cool as mine though. Life is good.” Ellie sighed and once again tamped down the urge to flee from the house entirely.

Cat spread her hands theatrically. “Uh oh - trouble in paradise! Let’s just say that we did not get together at the right time.”

Ellie scoffed. At least Cat, to her credit, wasn’t explicitly mentioning Dina. Ellie didn’t know if she’d be able to handle it if she did.

Cat continued, casual. “We both made some mistakes during our time together. I probably pushed that person too hard -”

“Maybe they deserved it -”

“They didn’t.”

“Well you didn’t deserve what they did to you -”

“You’re right - I didn’t. And they didn’t deserve to be treated like shit in return.” 

Ellie just pressed her lips into a thin line.

“And you know what I worried about the most after it was all over?”

Ellie stared down at her socks.

“That we would never be friends again. I was so, so, _so_ fucking scared that that person would just...cut me out of their life.” 

How jarring and awful it was, to see yourself through someone else’s pain.

“And I used to just...think over it constantly, beat myself up about it constantly. It just... _consumed_ me for a while. For a really long time, actually.”

“I’m sorry -”

Cat raised a hand. “Not your fault.” She took a breath before continuing.

“And maybe, if I hadn’t been so consumed by all of that…it I hadn’t let it just eat away at me...I could’ve moved on a little easier. I could’ve given myself the life I deserved.”

Cat fell silent, and Ellie couldn’t tell if she was waiting for a response or just letting her words settle. Whatever Ellie wanted to say rose and died in her throat - Cat, to her credit, seemed to sense this.

“Look, dude. I don’t know a lot of stuff in life, but I know this.” Cat clasped her hands in front of her and lifted them over her head, stretching. “If you’re willing to do the work, then that’s all you need. Beating yourself up, all that shit - after a point, it isn’t helpful. At least it wasn’t helpful for _me_ , and look how far I’ve come.” She did a little spin as if to emphasize her point, green ribbon flying around with her dark hair.

Ellie smiled, biting her lip. She sighed.

“When do you stop feeling guilty?”

Cat peered at her. “I wish I knew. But I get the feeling that this isn’t just about our relationship now.”

Ellie grasped for a different subject.

“I’m sorry that we never talked about this until now.”

“Me too,” Cat replied. “But now we did. And next time you’ll know better. Now go watch your son throw cake. I need a good laugh.”

Ellie found that she didn’t mind Astrid’s camera so much as the party continued. She kissed JJ’s hair and watched him make a mess out of the slice that Susan had cut for him, dodging his frosting-covered fists. Some of it smeared onto her cheek anyways.

“Little monster,” she mumbled, as she accepted a napkin from Dina.

“He gets that from you,” Dina said, smiling, and Ellie couldn’t help it. She felt a smile bloom on her face in return.

* * *

Snow came down in fat flakes and clung, wet and heavy, to trees and gutters and windowsills. It piled against Ellie’s window and almost blocked out the light on some days; it crunched and stuck underfoot and drifted beneath collars and up sleeves. 

“Heads up!”

Despite Ellie’s quick maneuvering, icy cold still slipped inside of her jacket, making her contort and hiss. Far-off giggles caught her ear.

Callie, blonde hair up in a loose bun, tittered behind one mittened hand. “I think those kids have it out for you,” she chuckled, while Ellie grumbled. 

“Ellie’s their favorite person! Right, Ellie?” Astrid’s smile was huge - Ellie just rolled her eyes.

“If by ‘favorite’ you mean ‘in a constant cold war with them,’ then, sure,” she replied.

Snowballs be damned, Ellie held back slightly, letting Astrid and Callie walk ahead of her a little ways. Their arms brushed from time to time, and on occasion Callie would lean into Astrid, just slightly, so that they moved down the road almost as one being. Ellie sighed and tried to bat away her anxieties that she would never deserve that kind of intimacy again.

She turned over what Cat had said, again and again. There was one part of doing the work that she still didn’t want to name.

Dina wasn’t some perfect person - she was flawed, she made mistakes, and it felt like Ellie could see those now. It was wrong to let Ellie’s own mistakes be the only thing that defined her, and at the same time, it was wrong to elevate Dina beyond reproach.

Maybe they weren’t in love anymore - but if they were going to raise their son together, they had to understand each other honestly.

The thought continued to knock around Ellie’s brain as JJ squirmed in her lap, looking alternately between her face and the photo album she had open on the coffee table in front of them.

“And that’s a...soccer jersey? I think? Whatever, it sounds kinda dull. You run around a field and kick a ball into a goal…” Ellie traced the picture for a second, before she was interrupted by JJ tugging on her ear again.

“Ow, ow, okay. Yeah, I’m bored too. Momma will be back soon, though.” 

JJ quieted for a moment, snuggled against the crook of her neck. Ellie took her chance to wrap her arms around him loosely, letting the silence billow around them both.

Joel’s face - so young and open and happy - stared back at her from the photo album. Ellie kissed the top of JJ’s head and sighed.

She almost didn’t hear Dina come in until she had circled into Ellie’s line of sight.

“Hey.”

Ellie inhaled sharply, coming back to herself and blinking rapidly. “Hi.” JJ was heavy in her arms, asleep. Ellie nodded at the photo album. “My storytelling must be really boring.”

Dina smiled. “Sharing more?”

Ellie swallowed, moving carefully. One hand went to absently trace JJ’s arm, still pudgy. “Better late than never, right?” She raised her eyes to Dina, and hoped she didn’t look too pathetic.

Dina just shrugged, leaning back into the loveseat. For a moment she looked boneless, her exhaustion hanging off of her tangibly. Ellie shifted.

“I can get out of your hair…” But Dina shook her head.

“While we’re on the subject of sharing...” She gestured at the photo album, and then met Ellie’s gaze. Her eyes were soft. “Do you want to talk about it more?”

Ellie considered JJ’s warm weight in her arms, and their sweet, happy moments that were scattered throughout her afternoon.

The work just kept calling, but she had grown accustomed to that by now.

“Okay.”

Dina wrapped JJ up in her arms, letting Ellie wander in the kitchen as she went upstairs. She came back down with her hair loose and energy in her step. Ellie leaned back against the counter, slouched.

“I was going to make tea anyways. Want any?”

It felt rude to refuse, so Ellie just nodded and leaned her elbows on the marble island, watching Dina fill the kettle. Dina hummed absently and swayed, jarringly casual. Ellie felt like she was sixteen again, and Dina was unreadable in her demeanor and actions, absolutely impenetrable. Absently, she tapped her fingers against the marble.

“So.” Dina turned on her heel, and looking at her up close was like looking at a bright light. “You let her go.”

The memory of that first conversation nearly bowled Ellie over, and she had to take a couple of steadying breaths.

“I did,” she said, voice rough. “I had her, and then…” She felt her shoulder blades expand and contract with the deep breath she took, all the way down to her toes. “I couldn’t do it.”

Ellie kept her gaze fixedly on the marble in front of her, on its swirling deep grays and speckled whites and blacks, and Dina’s voice cut through.

“Do you know why?”

Ellie knew she had to backtrack a little, not just for Dina’s sake but for her own as well - to help her pick up the threads that had led to her decision, as scattered and tangled as they were.

“I found them in Santa Barbara, like Tommy said. Her and the boy. They were…” Her brain felt fuzzy, sluggish, her memories from that night blurring together into a thick, deep sludge of pain. “They’d been captured, they were strung up…” She lifted a hand absently, feeling ineffectual. “They were starving, dying. I got them down, and...”

Ellie buried her face in her hands. Dina waited, and waited, and waited - her waiting was almost agony for Ellie. She wanted to be on the other side of this, so far away, so that she could look back on it in the distance and only see the smallest blip, so tiny that she could smudge it over with her thumb.

“She took me to the boats. She wanted us all to get away.” Her hands shook. “And I made her fight me.” Her voice cracked on _fight_ , high and rough in the back of her throat. Something warm and wet splashed onto her hand and Ellie looked down to see her own tears. “I threatened the boy. I used my knife. I made her do it.”

She looked anywhere but Dina. 

“And I had her. I had her, under the water, and…” Ellie inhaled shakily - she realized that tears were coursing down her cheeks.

How could she explain it? That the countless hours she had spent leading up to that moment, imagining it, _feeling_ it in her body and her mind until it wound its way into her very soul, into her very reason for living - it had all fallen away.

All of it, gone.

“And I just wanted him back.” 

And her face crumpled and Ellie felt shame well within her, shame at crying in front of Dina again - shame at what she had done, at what she had thought she could do, at her stupid, ineffectual boasts, her violence, her anger. And deep, deep sadness, for the part of herself that screamed and cried when Joel had died and that she had turned to with anger instead of comfort.

Ellie gasped and sobbed and then quieted, scrubbing her face with her sleeve.

She gestured absently with her left hand, studying her stumps as they shook. “She bit them off,” she finished dryly, before folding her left hand into her right.

Ellie hated the look of fear and concern on Dina’s face - she wanted to crawl back into her bed, where she wasn’t a burden any longer, where Dina wouldn’t have to think about her or worry about her anymore.

“The boy was worse than she was, he was dying.” She shied away from the thought, and then… “I don’t know what would have happened to him if I had killed her.” She swallowed hard.

“I hope...I hope they got where they were going,” she finished absently.

Ellie wanted Dina to hug her again, wanted to feel her arms firm around her and her body against her, solid and unwavering. She wanted it so badly that she itched and ached. She’d gone over that hug so many times in her head, as if replaying it could help her feel something good again, but Dina still stood apart from her - because of _course_ , that was what she deserved, that was what she was good for, just to cause pain…

“Ellie…” Dina’s voice was small, her eyes huge. “You saved their lives.”

Ellie wanted to scoff, a flash of disbelief through all her pain. “If you say so.”

“You stopped yourself.” Ellie just stared at her feet, feeling like the lightest touch would make her crack, make her fully come undone. “You came back.”

And Dina’s voice cracked on _back_ , and now Ellie wept openly, hot tears coursing down her cheeks as she gasped and tried to breathe - “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry Dina...”

Dina nodded, staying where she was. “I know.”

This was their rhythm, the inevitable ending anytime Ellie shared any details about her journey to and from California. Was this their new forever? Was this the pattern they would continue to sink into until it was all they knew?

It took a few minutes for Ellie to quiet, for her shuddering sobs to diminish and her shaking hands to quiet.

“The ocean was really cool,” she said, swallowing, reaching through her pain for a smile. Was it tactless of her to change the subject? “The shore. When I got there? You should have seen it - I had a drawing...” 

She patted her pockets as if one of them would contain her journal, until she remembered it was in her bag - and she couldn’t help but feel pathetic as she scrambled for it and searched for the right page, while Dina stood, silent, eyes red and watering.

“Here,” Ellie said, flipping her journal around. “Here, look.” 

Dina took the journal gently in her hands. A small smile bloomed on her face as she looked down at the drawing, tracing it with her fingers.

“It’s pretty,” she said. She then inhaled sharply and passed Ellie’s journal back to her.

“It’s late,” she said. “You should go home.” She nudged a box of tissues towards Ellie. “Take one.”

“Okay,” Ellie murmured in reply. And then she was in the foyer too quickly, before she knew it - pulling on Joel’s coat and trying to erase the image of Dina’s scared, sad expression from her mind -

“Ellie?”

She turned.

Dina had an unreadable expression on her face. It was part deep sadness, and part something softer - like relief, or calm.

“Thank you.”

Ellie could only nod, one hand on the doorknob, the other on the back of her neck. She suddenly felt deeply exhausted. The long, cold road back home beckoned her.

“Of course.”

* * *

Late winter inched through Jackson with its heavy snowstorms and low clouds and cold, sharp air. Ellie was thankful for the warmth of the stables, and just as thankful that she had decided to forgo patrol for another season - although she couldn’t help but notice the noises of dissatisfaction Maria made about the current patrol leader, who had apparently overworked one particular area to the point where the creek trails became almost overrun. 

When Christian protested that the patrolled segments had seen the highest uptick in infected for the past three winters, Maria retaliated that where infected had _been_ was sometimes the worst predictor of where they would _be_ next. Christian walked off in a huff, breath clouding around him, and Ellie turned back to her sweeping before Maria could see her smirk.

She mentioned this to Dina with a small laugh the next day, broaching it carefully at first - trivial, facetious topics had been slowest to come back into the fold of their conversations. But Dina just chuckled lightly as she edged around Astrid to glance at a recipe, before delegating Ellie to the pantry.

“Where did you find cinnamon?” Ellie leaned back slightly to bring the spice rack into view, looking over the labels written in Dina’s precise handwriting.

“From some folks who came through last fall.” Ellie turned and watched Dina wrestle JJ into his high chair, lower lip sucked between her teeth. JJ, to his credit, looked like he was having the time of his life.

Ellie chuckled and went back to her searching. “Hell of a lot easier than me trying to ride back to Jackson in the middle of a snowstorm because you just _had_ to add it to babka.”

“Oof, don’t remind me.” And then Dina was in the doorway, hands on her hips, eyebrows raised. “Okay, at this rate you’re just gonna pull down my entire spice rack.” 

Dina edged in front of Ellie, stood up on her tiptoes, and spun the carousel, swaying slightly.

And Ellie saw - there were freckles on the back of her neck, and a light sheen of sweat from her cooking, and her pulse fluttered right there under her jaw, and she was warm, and the expanse of her skin went on and on under her shirt...

“Here you go.”

Ellie blinked.

Dina had turned around, of course - and she was so, so close, and her eyes were so big, and her breath was warm on Ellie’s lips...

And then JJ cooed from the kitchen table and Dina folded the jar of cinnamon into Ellie’s hand with a smile, and was out of the pantry in the blink of an eye. 

With all of spring’s new growth came milestones in JJ’s development, with warring emotions in Ellie that she had both missed so much and was finally able to watch him grow. He finally had a handle on the meaning of “No”, which he leveraged with ease - “Just about as stubborn as his father,” Robin chuckled one evening when JJ threw a screaming tantrum at having to clean up his toys and get ready to go home. 

Ellie still felt a little flutter in her heart when he chose to come up to her, as if she had done anything to deserve that. She would stamp off her mud boots on the porch and hear JJ running to the front door as fast as his little legs could carry him, beating Dina there and grasping for the doorknob that was still out of his reach. She would scoop him up with a laugh and they would wave goodbye to Dina together. 

“Bye, Momma!”

Ellie never expected him to come to her when Dina was already around, but he continued to surprise her, and continued to carve out a space for her, despite all of her misgivings. He struggled out of Dina’s arms one evening, where they were sitting on Robin’s couch - JJ’s grandparents had all three of them over more and more, to the point where Ellie wondered if Dina had spoken to them - and squirmed into Ellie’s lap. 

“ _Oof_ , hi, buddy,” Ellie chuckled, steadying him as he fisted his hands in her shirt. She smoothed his hair over, letting the movie that played in front of them fade into a fuzzy background as she eased his hands from around her shirt collar and tickled his ribs.

Over the sound of his guffaws, Susan’s voice filtered in from the kitchen - “Dina, can you come help me with these green beans?” - and Dina shifted off of the couch, one hand still on JJ’s back - “Be right there!”

And then Dina’s hands were on Ellie’s shirt collar, smoothing out the wrinkles, so quickly that Ellie was hardly aware of it before she looked up. But Dina was already sauntering out of the living room and into the kitchen, looking so _normal_ and so relaxed. Ellie turned her attention back to JJ and tried to ignore how her face burned.

Part of her mind wanted to replay those moments again and again, as she lay in bed in her studio later that night - as if she could sink into that world where Dina still wanted her. She rolled onto her other side and focused on her memories of JJ instead - how he reached for her and clung to her, how bright his smile was when she played with him, how he drifted off in her arms when she read to him.

These thoughts tied Ellie over until one quiet afternoon, as she swept the barn aisle and enjoyed the sight of dust motes floating through the columns of fading sunlight that found their way in. She hummed as she worked, enjoying the silence and soothing smells of hay and horse, when footsteps sounded behind her.

“Hey.” 

Dina stepped into the half-light, one hand raised in greeting.

“Hi.”

“Thought I’d find you in here.” Dina’s smile was knowing.

“Just picking up some slack. Easier to work here when it’s emptier.” Dina nodded, scuffing her boots on the floor. Ellie could tell she was chewing over her words.

“Can we talk? Do you have time to come over to my place?”

A cold weight settled into Ellie’s stomach.

Things had been doing so well - did she do something wrong? Had she messed up in some unknowing way? Impending doom crept up and curled around her throat - this had been coming, and she had been so stupid to think that anything could be different, that Dina could still love her.

At least she’d had a little time with her son. That thought, more than anything, was what made her agree and follow Dina, barely visible in front of her in the low evening light.

All was quiet at Dina’s house - perhaps JJ was over at his grandparents’ - and Ellie felt awkward as she stepped over the threshold and toed off her boots. All the tiny details of Dina’s home suddenly stood out to her, and it washed over her, the creeping fact that she had been envisioning this was _her_ home too, eventually. 

Maybe it was time to let that go.

“In here,” Dina called, motioning towards the kitchen, soft smile on her face. Ellie made herself move.

“Guess it’s my turn to be vulnerable.”

“This kitchen sure has seen a lot,” Ellie replied, and Dina chuckled.

“I don’t know how to say this, so I’ll just say it.”

“Okay.”

Dina rocked back and forth on her feet, and Ellie felt a surge of fear and impatience as she prepared to speak.

“Do you...do you want to be in a relationship with me?”

And then Ellie stopped breathing.

_What?_

Sense came back to her first - she couldn’t be tactless here, she had to tread carefully - and then words, thrown together in what she hoped was coherence.

“I don’t...I don’t want to do anything that you don’t want to do.”

“Ellie, you can just answer the question.”

Dina’s abruptness somehow cut through her anxieties, her contingency plans, her spinning, spinning mind that grasped for every enumeration of how she had fucked this up.

“There’s never been anyone else, Dina. It’s only ever been you.”

“Okay.”

Dina’s expression was unreadable, and immediately Ellie knew she had to get ahead of this.

“And if you aren’t okay with that I can...I can step back, it’s okay. You can tell me -”

But Dina was shaking her head. “No, no, no. You’re fine, you’re fine. That’s not what this is about.”

Then what? What could it possibly, _possibly_ be about? Ellie pursed her lips and swallowed, past the lump in her throat and in her chest. Dina forged on.

“And what...what does your therapist think about you being with someone?”

Ellie blinked. “She would probably say that...that I need to figure out what I need first.”

“Okay.” 

Ellie could see that Dina was scrambling a little, pulling the conversation back to a place where she had control.

“I don’t want to do anything that would set you back or...or anything.”

Which was _what_ , exactly? Ellie swallowed, finding her voice. “What do you want to do?” She forced her tone to be casual, even as surprise and anxiety continued to rise and fall in her in equal measure.

Dina looked down, contemplative. When she spoke, her voice was soft. “I don’t know if I can ever forgive you for what you did.”

And there was that fog again, closing over her tightening its hold -

“But…but there’s something here, between us. And it’s not finished. Do you agree?” 

And the sheer _pragmatism_ of Dina’s question shook Ellie. 

It had never occurred to her to ask these questions of Dina herself, of course. Ellie refused to let herself overstep like that. But at the same time, she had never fully imagined that _Dina_ would be the one to open this door.

All she could feel was the lump in her throat, the pressure in her chest, as her disbelieving eyes took in what Dina was placing in front of her.

“I...uh…” Ellie shook herself. “Yeah, yes.” She took a deep breath. It felt important to say it again. 

“Yes.”

Dina nodded, and Ellie became conscious of the fact that she was tugging at her own fingers. She shoved her hands into her pockets. “So...uh...what do you want to do next?”

Dina bit her lip. “Let me think about it, okay?”

“Okay.”

And as Ellie walked back to her studio, she replayed their conversation in her head, over and over and over again.

It wasn’t easy, but was it really that simple?

The path that was falling in love with Dina had felt so clear, so _natural_ , that Ellie realized that it had never occurred to her that this was something they could choose. 

They could _try_. 

If it didn’t work, then it didn’t work - and Ellie’s heart seized at the thought of that worst case becoming all too real. But, at the very least, they could try. And it was a massive act of generosity, she realized, for Dina to even entertain that in the first place.

It was also a point in therapy that Ellie had been dreading, because speaking about it meant not just making it real but enumerating over all the many ways it could fail, all the many ways she could fuck up, or - perhaps the worst of all - the many ways that Dina could simply move on from her.

Preparing for them all felt monumentally exhausting. 

There were so many things that Ellie knew that Dina _couldn’t_ be. A crutch, a destructive coping mechanism, something to be avoided, something to be feared, something of which to be envious. 

“I don’t want to put all this on her.”

“Then you keep coming back here. She can’t solve all of your problems. No one person can. Not even me.”

The long days were trivial and tedious while their hours felt monumental - discussing things that Ellie thought would never be a possibility for her, ever again; and then spending time with her son, and loving him, and watching him grow. Ellie expected to wake up from this surreal dream at any moment.

And Dina...maybe it was the rose-colored glasses, but Dina seemed warmer somehow, softer and more casual. Her hand lingered on Ellie’s arm from time to time, solid and grounding. Once, they had both ended up at Susan and Robin’s at the same time - Dina to pick up JJ, and Ellie to drop off a drawing she had made of Jesse - and JJ managed to squirm out of Susan’s arms and scamper into Ellie’s before anyone could stop him. 

“He really is a little monster,” Dina chuckled, and Ellie hastened to agree, and then Dina’s hand drifted from JJ’s back to the crook of Ellie’s arm - and Ellie swore she could feel every minute squeeze and flex of Dina’s fingers through her shirt, and all the breath just about went out of her body. 

JJ made fast friends at the little daycare where he spent a couple of days a week, to the point where Dina’s house became the sight of playdates, especially as the snows slowly cleared. Ellie found her time with JJ overlapping more and more with these playdates, and while she missed her one-on-one time with him, she also swelled with joy at the sight of him inviting others into his space.

And like his birthday party, playdates were an excuse for Astrid and others - despite being childless themselves - to make an appearance, especially when Dina’s call for a metaphorical “all hands on deck” went out.

This was how Ellie found herself scrubbing ink from her hands one afternoon, after an unfortunate encounter between herself and a marker-wielding three-year-old. The fuzzy hilarity of the memory still made her smile - from JJ’s bright, raucous laughter to Dina’s exasperation, tempered by her smile as she shooed Ellie upstairs since the kitchen was currently occupied.

She watched the water run over her stubs, contemplative for a moment. It was probably nothing, but Dina had sent her upstairs...and the thought sat in Ellie’s mind, like something bright and soft, at the notion that Dina was letting her in just a little more -

Ellie turned off the sink at the same time that footsteps - thudding, pounding - rose behind her. From outside the bathroom door -

From _outside_ -

And fear rose in Ellie.

It made her grip the linoleum hard, running sink forgotten. She hunched over and tried to suck down oxygen, tried to quiet the gallop of her heart that was increasing to something frantic, something _terrified_ -

 _No, no, no, not here_ …

But it lapped at her feet and then her knees and her stomach and her neck, until she could ignore it no longer, until she roiled in thick, cloying, desperate fear -

It was some awful, churning anxiety that made herself reach for weapons that weren’t there; and, finding none, made herself shrink down into a corner, back pressed against the bathtub, shuddering and gasping and shaking and -

“Boys?”

There was Astrid, and what was she doing here? Where was Dina? Oh, God, Dina -

“Ellie?”

The bathroom door opened and Ellie lurched and almost fell right into Astrid’s arms, gasping - “I can’t, I can’t, I gotta -”

“Hey, hey, take it easy. It’s okay…”

Astrid steered her to sit on the edge of the bathtub, where Ellie shook and shuddered and cried, quailing in front of the dark pools of Astrid’s eyes.

Time either dragged or flew by, she couldn’t tell - and eventually, Ellie sucked down air and felt some semblance of the ground returning to her, alongside a wave of shame. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry -”

“It’s okay, it’s okay -”

Ellie scrunched her eyes shut and gasped and fuck, she was _crying_ , not _now_ -

“...Panic attack,” she finally gasped out, brokenly, and Astrid just nodded. 

“Come on…the kids are all downstairs, you can rest up here...”

Astrid coaxed her out, and Ellie was horribly aware of how cold her hands felt, of how she shook - and then she was laying down on something soft, something that smelled so familiar -

It usually would have occurred to her that she was laying down in Dina’s bed as a stranger, that Dina was being so kind out of obligation to a friend, that she would never allow this to happen if Ellie was a romantic prospect to her. The thought stung, and she tried to push it away. It seemed trivial now, stupid.

The passage of time was once again indeterminate, but at some point, the bedroom door creaked open. Ellie blinked blearily and watched a tuft of black hair move into the room, and then JJ toddled into her line of sight. She pushed herself up weakly.

“Hey, buddy. Where’s your momma?”

JJ clutched a fuzzy toy sheep - Ellie recognized it as Alice’s handiwork. He brandished it at Ellie.

“Mummy play!” 

Well, she couldn’t let him down. Ellie eased shakily out of bed - JJ lifted his arms and she scooped him up, and he laughed. Ellie inhaled deeply and swayed slightly on her feet, feeling soothed by his weight in her arms.

Footsteps sounded up the stairs, and then Dina was on the landing down the hall. She froze when she saw Ellie.

“Wave to Momma, buddy,” Ellie said - anything to keep herself from meeting Dina’s eyes - and she waved as well. Dina waved back. She seemed to hesitate, but maybe Ellie had imagined it - since she was now striding down the hallway easily.

“Don’t get away from me like that, bubba,” Dina muttered, stepping close and running her fingers through JJ’s hair.

“Play!” JJ repeated. Ellie smiled sheepishly.

“Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Dina said, shrugging. Her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Astrid said you weren’t feeling well? Can I touch your face?” 

Ellie could only nod. And then the back of Dina’s hand was on Ellie’s forehead, and Ellie swore the floor went out from under her.

“Yeah, yeah...um…” She held JJ a little tighter to her. “I had a...a panic attack.” She continued to evade Dina’s eyes.

Dina nodded. “You’re a little warm,” she muttered, now pressing the flat of her palm against Ellie’s cheek. Ellie had to resist the urge to lean into it, and focused on how JJ was resolutely hitting her chest with the toy sheep. “Do you want tea?”

“I don’t wanna step on your toes…”

“You aren’t,” Dina said simply. “Most folks are leaving already anyways. I’ll put him to bed. Can you send Astrid up here when you go down?”

“Yeah...okay.” She gently handed JJ over, smiling at Dina’s whispered “Hi, buddy” as he squirmed into her arms.

Astrid met her at the bottom of the staircase. “You feeling any better?”

Ellie nodded shallowly. “Yeah, yeah. Thank you.”

“Not a problem,” Astrid replied, and she darted upstairs. At JJ’s laugh, it occurred to Ellie that Astrid was helping Dina with her nightly chores. Ellie’s heart twisted slightly.

She tamped that feeling down as best she could and lingered in the living room, sitting on the couch with her arms wrapped around a pillow. She hastened to put it back when she heard Astrid and Dina descending the stairs.

Dina waved to Astrid, but her eyes on Ellie were expectant. When she led them both into the kitchen, Ellie chuckled. “You have stools this time?” 

“Figured we could all use a place to sit,” Dina replied, a half-smile curling across her face.

“So.”

Ellie flinched at the fuzziness of her memory, at how quickly her evening had gone from pure, sweet joy to utter fear.

“I think it was the kids running that did it.” Ellie wondered if she should sound more apologetic. “Certain sounds…” She waved a hand amorphously in the air. Dina just nodded. Ellie stared down at her hands.

“Does anything help?”

Ellie inhaled, and ran one of her fingers along the marble. “Yeah,” she said tentatively. “Yeah, um...anything that helps with, like…” She waved her hands around a little. “Re-centering? Like, obviously we’re not in danger in this house, in Jackson. So just...talking myself down. Explaining shit to myself.” 

Putting words to the process felt ineffectual and trivial. Dina just nodded.

“Is it worse when…” She nodded at the open windows in the living room. 

Ellie shrugged. “Sometimes. And also when I don’t sleep. Everything’s harder when I don’t sleep.” Dina nodded again.

“Can I do anything?”

“I don’t know.” Ellie’s voice was soft. It felt weak. She knew Dina wanted to help - and, most of all, Ellie didn’t want to believe that she was beyond help. She didn’t want Dina to give up on her.

But Dina just nodded again. “That all sounds really hard. I’m sorry.”

“It...it is. Hard. Yeah.” Ellie swallowed. “Thanks.”

Dina’s mouth quirked into a small smile. “Well take the rest of those sandwiches with you, I couldn’t get Astrid to take more than a couple of. I keep trying to tell her that the fastest way to a girl’s heart is with food.” She chuckled, and Ellie flushed.

“Dina.”

“Hmm?”

Ellie stared down at her hands. She focused on relaxing - the muscles in her shoulders, in her neck, in her upper back. She imagined herself sinking into the floor, unseen and unheard.

“You don’t have to do this, if you don't want to.”

Dina frowned. “Do what?”

“That…” Ellie gestured vaguely back up the stairs. “That’s...just a fraction of what’s...of what’s…” The words crowded up in the back of her throat, buoyed by shame. Ellie swallowed, and made herself meet Dina’s eyes. 

“I want you to know what you’re getting into.”

Recognition dawned on Dina’s face in the slightest of movements: her eyebrows raising, her mouth and eyes softening. 

“Ellie,” Dina murmured. 

And then she stepped into Ellie’s space, brushing a lock of hair behind her ears, eyes wide and dark and soft. “We’ll figure it out, alright? Just like with anything else.” Her hands were soft in Ellie’s, her gaze open and earnest.

“Dina.” Ellie wanted to run - so, so badly. She wanted to disappear. She didn’t want to feel it all, how she would fail, how she wouldn’t be enough. “Dina, you don’t have to.” 

Her voice cracked, but she needed to do this: offering a way out. 

“I know,” Dina said simply. Her mouth curved into a half-smile. “But I want to try.”

And Ellie felt herself crumple, in - for perhaps the first time in months - sheer, pure relief. She leaned into Dina’s arms, and Dina caught her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks y'all for your kudos and comments! Cheers and have a safe holiday season, y'all.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays to those who celebrate!
> 
> There's mild smut in the very last section of this chapter. If folks want anything tagged, let me know.

The sight of Talia’s braid swaying back and forth in front of her became a familiar sight to Dina not long into their journey. It appeared to her in many iterations - sometimes it was backlit as they walked into the direction of the rising sun; sometimes it snagged on low branches, or swayed in the breeze - but it was a constant, and for that she was appreciative. It was a tether that kept her walking, even when her legs burned and she wanted to lay down and curl up in a real bed.

Now, she watched as Talia descended the slope a few meters in front of her. Her hair shone in the bright, midday sun that hung overhead.

Dina trailed after her, breath jolting out of her body each time her booted feet collided with the dirt. Early spring’s runoff had left this valley relatively untouched, and the ground underfoot still held up. Patches of wildflowers greeted them as they descended - small bushels of light purple, swaying in the crisp breeze that drifted down from the mountains. 

The slope leveled out and Talia slowed, absently kicking a rock along as Dina caught up. It rolled into a shallow stream that trickled along before them, and Dina knelt to let the water run over her hands.

“How’re those blisters?” Talia slipped off her pack, but remained standing.

Dina splashed her face and sat back on her heels, feeling the icy water trickle down her neck and back. “I can still walk, can’t I?”

Talia frowned. “If they’re bothering you…” She trailed off, glancing at Dina, and then at the path that stretched out in front of them.

“It’s fine,” Dina said with finality, wincing slightly as she pushed herself back to her feet. “Let’s keep going.”

Talia shouldered her pack and continued without complaint. Dina couldn’t help but notice that she set a slightly slower pace now.

It was the kind of day where the sun seemed to hang high in the sky for more time than was possible, where everything around Dina was so well-lit and so bright that she hardly believed there could be darkness in this world. Maybe this day would go on forever, until they reached Jackson, safe and sound…

Silence billowed between herself and Talia, stretched and awkward. Dina swallowed. The ease of conversation with her sister had waxed and waned on their journey, oscillating between banter and stretches of dark silence. 

Now an unease settled in her - what was changing between them, the further they got from New Mexico? 

“Do you miss her?”

Talia glanced back at her, eyes far away. “Who, Mom?”

“No. Angela.”

If Talia was surprised by the sudden subject change, she didn’t show it except for the minute hesitation in one step - but a second later she continued on, her gait as smooth and impassive as ever.

“No,” came her even reply, and Dina frowned. A fuzzy image swam through her mind: Talia, hair loose and eyes bright, cutting a long arc across a makeshift dance floor in the arms of a slight woman. Her light blonde hair contrasted with Talia’s, and her big eyes were relaxed and easy.

Dina let that thought go and stayed silent until she and Talia had crested another low, rolling hill.

“I mean, I hope she’s okay, wherever she is,” Talia continued. “But I don’t, you know...miss her.”

“How come we never talked about this?”

Dina knew there was more implied in her question - _Do you miss home? Do you miss what we had? Do you miss what we were?_

She had tried to cleanse herself of those memories - the hills painted oranges and reds in the rising or setting sun; the pervasive thrum of nature and life around them, from the hardiest beasts to the most stubborn flora; the ease that she and her sister had slipped into after their mother passed, never perfect but at least present, at least functioning, good _enough_. 

Was it worth it, leaving “good enough” to reach for something that could ultimately go nowhere? 

Talia shrugged, tucking one long strand of hair behind her ear. She spoke without looking at Dina, sending her voice down the trail before them, as if it could clear the way.

Dina turned Talia’s words over in her mind, again and again, and they were a well-worn thing by the time they stopped to make camp that evening. She watched the light from their low fire flicker across Talia’s face, across the bridge of her nose, against her wide, dark eyes.

“I think I get it.”

Talia looked up, and her eyes were soft. She set another branch on the fire, and her voice was low when she spoke.

“Good.”

Dina hadn’t realized until then that putting distance between something and herself could show it in a new light - allow her to see its shadows and its crevices and its weak points, the other sides of its strengths and beauty.

And this was top of mind as she held Ellie, as she said those words that she had practiced to herself, over and over again: 

“But I want to try.”

And Ellie’s body was warm in her arms, heavy and _real_ and _here_. She smelled the same, the rise and fall of her chest was the same, and the gravity of what Dina had told her seemed to wash over them both. Dina firmed her arms around Ellie’s waist to keep it from washing her away.

It had been a long time coming.

It was enough to make Dina step out into the street when she saw this happening in the distance, and peer around people in her path to see those casual, achingly familiar gestures again. 

It was a start.

And Dina had expected her anger to crest again and again. 

She had made room for it - she had given Ellie a schedule, for both of their benefit, to give them time together and time apart (although, admittedly, she had stretched the boundaries of that schedule herself from time to time). They had a system, they were predictable, and Ellie - to her credit - stuck to it. But so even as Dina waved at Ellie and closed her front door on her, there was no disappointment or dread in her, filling that space and making itself known.

There was...contentment. 

The last time Dina could remember that feeling so clearly was one night at the farmhouse when their furniture had started arriving, after she had watched Ellie spend an hour trying to assemble their bed frame. 

She had reclined back on their mattress and pulled Ellie down with her, giggling. Ellie rolled her eyes but settled slowly anyways, careful of Dina’s belly. She sighed.

“Of all things, a fucking bed frame…”

Dina frowned - she knew by now that anything could be a trigger. “Hey.” She tugged Ellie’s free hand to her rounded belly. “We’re doing this, yeah?” 

Ellie looked up from where Dina had placed her hand, and her expression was worry that faded into something softer. A lock of hair had come down from her bun, and Dina tucked it behind her ear. 

“Yeah.”

The knowledge of what Ellie had done, or not done, in Santa Barbara was no panacea. It didn’t raze those fields of her long-tended disappointment and anger and distrust.

But if the scaffolding of their system, the ceremony of it all, was the skeleton, then Santa Barbara was like a malignant tumor that had been cut out - finally, after lurking for so long and growing and reaching out to their very fingertips, up and out of their throats. It showed how much work there was left to be done, but the prospect of seeing that at all was still _progress_. 

The thought dogged Dina in the days following her conversation with Ellie, as she dodged around Dustin at the shop, and oversaw her mentees’ repairs, and scolded one of them for risky usage of the soldering iron. But she smiled bright when said mentee went out with her the following week to fix some downed power lines in Jackson’s south eastern sector, all easy confidence when their patrons thanked them for their work.

With all the time she was spending away from home, part of Dina worried for JJ’s development - for all the tiny, minute tasks he would not learn unless she was there to coax him through every clumsy, early iteration. But he now made his bed in no time at all, and tried to help Dina with hers (as ineffectual as it was, given that he was barely taller than the mattress that sat on the bed frame), and dropped his dirty clothes in the laundry hamper.

Dina still picked up a spare sock now and then, but JJ continued to grow into the space faster than she had expected, shedding his baby sweetness with alacrity that made Dina’s breath catch. She wouldn’t be surprised if Ellie, who would often cart him around in her arms as she did chores at the farmhouse, had something to do with his domestic proclivities.

The ring of measuring spoons were still one of JJ’s favorites utensils - “Maybe this is what I should have used as a teething toy,” Dina sighed one day after prising it out of his mouth again, while Astrid smothered her laugh with her hand - but he was soon fascinated by the tasks Astrid flurried through each time she was over.

Astrid would hold him in her arms as he stirred dry ingredients in a bowl - or, not so much stirred, but jerked the spoon back and forth, babbling and laughing all the while. 

“Alrighty,” Astrid would say with finality, handing JJ back to Dina and wiping flour from her face. “See, we didn’t need that sift after all!”

“Thift!” JJ supplied. “Egg!”

“He says that one in his sleep, too,” Dina remarked, and Astrid doubled over, cackling.

It dawned on her only later that she had ached for Ellie in that moment, for her to join in on their casual humor, their light banter, their pointless, plotless _fun_.

She wasn’t entirely absent, though. Sometimes Dina saw her in the barn, walking over whenever she had a break from her veterinary duties to pull JJ into her arms. She would kiss his hair and listen to him babble about all the riding he had done, her expression open and impressed.

JJ was at home in the saddle, or at least as home as a two-and-a-half year old could be, squealing in excitement every time Dina took him down to the barn. He would scamper down the aisles to Japan’s stall, giggling as the mare leaned over her door and lipped at his hands and hair. He knew how to pet her already - he was so careful with all animals, Dina noted with a soft smile. When she rode with him in front of her in the saddle, or hand-walked Japan slowly around the indoor arena as he swayed on the mare’s back, he fisted his hands in her mane and laughed, high and bright. 

“You’re way better than I was when I was your age, Spud!” Ellie would exclaim, and JJ would grip her shirt collar and laugh.

Sometimes he cried when Ellie handed him back to Dina, little hands fisting in her shirt even as Ellie gently pried him off of her. Dina would hold him close and whisper what she hoped were soothing words - “She’ll come back, honey, she will. Mummy will come back.”

JJ would quiet, but inevitably he would continue to ask for her - as they said goodbye to Japan, as they walked home, as they got ready for bed.

And, more and more, Dina realized she was comforting herself just as much as she comforted him.

Was this the natural course of things? Or was Dina being selfish, short-sighted, naive to think that Ellie could join them in this space now? She would be lying if she hadn’t agreed that the structure of the community, of her friends, had built up over time to create a small space in Dina where - if she looked close enough - the tiny, wilted flower of her love was growing again.

And it wasn’t until she said those words - _But I want to try_ \- that purpose finally seemed to enter her actions, purpose that wasn’t just knitting her family back together. 

She _wanted_ Ellie again.

“What sounds do cows make?”

Dina leaned back on her hands and let the breeze pick at her hair. JJ was silent for a second, brow screwed up in concentration - then, “Woof!” He collapsed in giggles at his own joke.

“A barking cow?” Ellie replied, faux-wonder dawning on her face. “Hey Dina, have you ever heard a barking cow?” 

“Can’t say I have,” Dina replied, prodding JJ in the ribs as he cackled. He rolled over - narrowly avoiding both the sandwich out of which Dina had taken two bites and then set down, and the flower crown of small purple and yellow blossoms that Dina had been absently assembling. As he scrambled to his feet, Dina snagged it quickly and placed it back on her head.

Ellie leaned back on her elbows, smiling as JJ walked up to her and fisted one hand in her shirt. “Hey, buddy,” she murmured. “What do you call a farm where none of the cows give milk?”

He was probably too young to fully understand the premise, but JJ guffawed all the same when Ellie exclaimed - “An udder disaster!”

They ended up rolling over in the grass together, laughing as if whatever Ellie said was the funniest thing in the world. Dina watched the sun, hanging high and bright above them, and listened to their happiness.

“Hey.”

Dina blinked. Ellie stood next to her, arm outstretched. 

“It’s getting late, yeah?” 

Dina let Ellie pull her to her feet, making to gather her pack when Ellie stopped her with a hand on her arm, and she was standing so _close_ -

“Hold still,” Ellie breathed, and Dina froze - and Ellie’s fingertips grazed against her right temple, warm and close and _there_ , and then withdrew. 

“Hi, little friend,” Ellie murmured, and Dina looked down to see a ladybug, sitting in the palm of her left hand. 

It was gone in a flash, and Dina smiled and poked tentatively at her hair - “Anymore stragglers?” - and Ellie chuckled and stepped close, and her fingers were warm as they ghosted over Dina’s ears and the base of her neck. Dina smiled bashfully, looking down and to the right. JJ stood next to Ellie, gripping the side of one of her pant legs in one hand, and a clump of grass in the other.

“Hey, bud,” Dina murmured, leaning down to scoop him up. “Let’s go, yeah?”

They were halfway across the field when Dina side-stepped a sinkhole and almost walked right into Ellie - “Sorry, sorry” - who steadied her, catching her free hand.

“I promise I know how to walk,” Dina supplied, fixing Ellie with what she hoped was a stern gaze. Ellie just smiled and squeezed her hand, and Dina felt her heart jump.

“Is this okay?”

Dina squeezed back softly. 

“Yeah.” 

* * *

Dina felt overly cognizant of the fact that, even as they went through the tentative motions of establishing a new relationship, there were still areas that they had not yet covered. Their negative space loomed out at Dina, made her feel along their ridges and cower at how large and complex they were.

At least before, there had been flirtation, and nerves, and flickering desire. Now, all of that still thrummed, but it was squarely underneath the work that was to be done. And what work there was. 

The rot and tumor that was Santa Barbara, and everything it represented, had been excised - but what remained, what else had been infected, and how deep did the damage go? 

So it felt like a relief when Alice approached Dina, and asked if she wanted to go out with her and Cat, and would Ellie like to join as well?

And what a normal, meaningless thing that people did, when they were happy, healthy, _okay_ \- Dina couldn’t help but agree immediately.

And then she kicked herself as she leaned against a table in the Tipsy Bison, half-listening to Cat talk about how much she despised the _grisaille_ painting technique, and half-watching Ellie. 

Ellie flitted about like a bird with a broken wing. She would settle on a place and shift and shudder, clearly uncomfortable; then she would drag herself to a new place, and it would repeat, over and over. Even when she walked up to stand next to Dina, she leaned from foot to foot, eyes darting around, unable to settle.

Dina felt an awkward shame - _she_ had encouraged Ellie to come with her, after all - and frustration that Ellie hadn’t pushed back on her.

And, then, shame again - that maybe she hadn’t given Ellie that chance in the first place.

She felt uncalibrated, adrift without a compass, not knowing which direction was up and which was truth. Still, she followed Ellie when she slipped out, murmuring a hasty apology to Cat and stepping into the warm night air.

Ellie leaned against a support beam, hands shoved in her pockets. When she saw her, Dina let out a breath that she hadn’t known she’d been holding. She stepped around to the other side of the beam and forced a casual tone into her voice.

“Hey.”

Ellie kept her gaze down. “Hey.”

Dina knew it would be a waste to beat around the bush. “Are you uncomfortable? We can leave, if you want.”

Ellie frowned, and Dina knew she had voiced the very thing that Ellie would take as evidence of another failure. “I don’t want to do that to you.”

“Ellie, I’m not having fun if you aren’t having fun.” Maybe the cliche - as tired and true as it was - would get to her.

Ellie was quiet then. Dina let that quiet grow, waited to see if it would form into anything more. When it didn’t, Dina brushed her disappointment aside. “You can tell me these things. If you need anything different, if you want me to do anything different. It’s okay.”

“I don’t want to be a...a burden on you.” There it was, that tired adage, that made Dina want to shake Ellie and scream in her face - _You’re not, you’re not, you’re not_ -

Instead, she reached around the beam and found Ellie’s hand, squeezed it, brushed Ellie’s knuckles when Ellie squeezed back.

“You’re _not_ , Ellie.”

Ellie leaned more heavily against the support beam, glanced around, and took a deep breath. Dina realized later she was steeling herself. 

“I’ll...sometimes…” She inhaled, and there was something like finality in her as she exhaled. “I get so...lost? In my head. In what happened. And everything gets overwhelming, everything piles on top of each other until I just can’t...function anymore…and I just have to leave, I can’t deal with it all...”

Dina let this wash over her, this explanation that had been withheld for so long, that fit so well. “Like at the farmhouse?”

“Yeah.” Ellie’s hand was suddenly firm in Dina’s. “And I’m sorry, Dina, I know that pissed you off, I know I shouldn’t just run away…”

“It _scared_ me, Ellie.” Dina brushed her thumb over Ellie’s knuckles, just as much to ground herself as she lifted her eyes and found Ellie looking right at her. “I didn’t know where you were, I didn’t know how long you’d be gone, or how I could help...I didn’t know anything.”

After her admittance, the contours of their conversation came easier.

“Can I do anything to help?”

“Sometimes I need to just be...left alone.”

Dina nodded. "We can do that."

But Ellie frowned, and Dina sensed that more specifics were needed at this point. She took a breath, gathering her thoughts.

“How about this? If you wanna be left alone, you can tell me. And if you need me to check in with you, you can tell me too. You can always change your mind, and that’s okay too. But..." Ellie looked up at her then, and Dina almost faltered. "But we need to communicate, okay? We need to keep talking.”

"Okay." Ellie's voice softened, and Dina smiled up at her. "Okay."

It felt anticlimactic, too practical - too easy? - to set down those boundaries. To wait to see if they would hold.

But now the body of the conversation trailed out in front of them, and Dina felt like they were on the other side of it now, felt like she could breathe again. She squeezed Ellie’s hand in hers, and let the joviality of the night wash over her again.

“Wanna get out of here?”

When Ellie smiled back at her, Dina exhaled through her nose and made to tug her along.

Jackson unfolded in front of them, dark and mostly empty. Dina steered their course slightly towards one of the large fields where they had picnicked previously. At some point Ellie slowed - Dina looked back and saw her looking up, still holding on to Dina’s hand. 

“See anything interesting?”

Ellie squeezed her hand. “Just haven’t looked at them in a while.”

They stopped at the edge of a field, a swath of darkness that stretched out in front of them. Dina could almost picture the tall grasses swaying in the cool breeze. Ellie’s hand was warm in hers, her thumb tracing slowly across Dina’s knuckles. 

“It kind of sounds like the ocean,” Ellie murmured.

“I wouldn’t know.”

A ghost of a smile played over Ellie’s lips. “Wanna find out?”

“What are you gonna do to me?” Dina murmured, chuckling dryly.

“Come on,” Ellie replied, smoothing her hands along Dina’s upper arms. Dina shivered. “Trust me. Close your eyes.”

How could she refuse? Dina hummed, and let her eyes close, let her mind go to an easy, imaginative place. She was well-practiced at this. New Mexico still lived in her head, flowering and bright and beautiful, occupied by just her sister, and Ellie, and Jesse, and Joel -

But it had become a haven for ghosts, a place to retreat in her mind, to detach whenever the world was too much (although it almost always was).

This was different. She felt Ellie’s mouth near her ear, Ellie’s hands on her shoulders, holding her steady -

And the images she weaved felt bright and raw and real - the ocean spray on your face, and how it stung your eyes; how the sun-warmed sand shifted from dry and hot to cool and wet and back again; how tiny creatures burrowed underfoot, any sign of their presence washed away in seconds -

How the waves stretched out to infinity, and their force could make a person stumble; how gently the current deposited shells and debris on the shore, washed clean in the brine; how the sun hung heavy in the sky, somehow hotter and brighter, almost scalding -

How Ellie waded out into the current, held her hands under the water and watched the caked, dried blood lift away; how part of her itched to give in and swim, to the other side of the world, to a place where she was nameless and unknown -

How she wanted to go home.

Dina would be lying to herself if she said she hadn’t tried to envision what Ellie saw on her way to Santa Barbara. It made her toss and turn at night, made her wake early and wander the farmhouse, as her mind conjured awful images of Ellie bleeding, dying, crying for her…

_What did you see out there?_

And the answer came to her then, in the rich, soft tones of Ellie’s voice - death, yes, and blood, and pain, but also the sun shining on the water and the perpetual rhythm of the waves; something old and inevitable and forever, something beautiful and timeless. 

It would not wash away all the blood - it could not - but at the very least it gave her a place to rest, to let her body and mind go, to let herself be pulled along and carried in the current as she pulled the pieces of herself back together.

Death may have pulled her out there, but choosing life brought her back.

Dina turned, and Ellie’s arms firmed around her waist, pulling her closer. Dina let herself be moved, studying Ellie’s downturned gaze. She let her fingertips graze Ellie’s cheekbones, her jaw, a scar on her chin. She brushed it with her thumb, sighing as Ellie leaned into her palm.

When Dina spoke next, her voice was barely above a whisper.

“Can I kiss you?”

* * *

Even before their first, Dina had wanted to kiss Ellie for a long, long time.

It scared her.

Not because of the duration of time in which she had wanted this - which numbered on years. And not because of the intensity with which she wanted Ellie, with that deep, old ache - the number of times she wished for Ellie’s fingers inside of her, strong and knowing and good, coaxing her towards release with so much care and love.

No - what scared her was how completely she wanted this kiss to change them. To change her.

Talia’s death had necessitated a separation, an emotional rending from the people around her, those she knew and those she didn’t. And then Ellie flickered on the peripheries of her vision, more and more, and Dina couldn’t deny that she wanted her.

First it was platonic, going to each other in so much confidence, through those gangly awkward years of puberty - that wildly mercurial experience of being a young person in such a world…

And then there were moments, laying on Ellie’s bed and listening to her music, when Dina thought - _I could make this more_. All of the jokes and the laughter and the love - she didn’t have to live outside of it anymore. She didn’t have to look away from it anymore.

It was _real_ , so real and true and good, and perhaps that was why Jesse had accepted her decision to break up so amicably. 

“You’re allowed to feel upset about this.”

“I know. I am. Doesn’t mean you need to see it.”

“Just...you’re okay?”

“I’ll be okay. But I need you to be okay too, no matter what happens.” He had pinned her with his eyes then, and Dina bit her lip.

“Yeah...okay…” Dina had trailed off, unable meet his gaze, unable to assure him that she would be fine _no matter what_.

That was what brought Dina to reach for Ellie that night in the church, to take her arms and place them around her body - there was no more pantomime, no more pretending. It was real, and she would make it so.

In some sense, that first kiss had been the truest one that they had shared. With the exception of their heated but careful lovemaking in the weed den - and Dina could still remember how singular and focused and soft Ellie had been, how tender and warm her touch was - everything that followed was shattered, misshapen.

Ellie was a person broken, wrenched apart, with cracks running deeper than Dina could see, and pieces that healed over in horrible, incorrect ways. Dina did what she could, what she thought was right, but it all felt ineffectual, like a tide lapping at a rock for millenia. 

She found Ellie downstairs one early morning at their farmhouse, standing in their kitchen, clearly having just done a circuit of the ground floor. When Dina set her arms around her waist and kissed her neck, her body was cold - and although Ellie followed her when Dina coaxed her back upstairs and into bed, she knew that her touch was not what Ellie needed.

It was easy to fall into that trap, though. Sometimes they would make love for hours, until everything was sweaty and tired and hazy, until Dina felt reduced down to only her most essential parts - the parts for surviving, yes, but also the parts for loving, for care and sweetness and closest ties.

She would look into Ellie’s eyes, pupils blown so wide that Dina could hardly see the green of her irises, and wonder what she had been reduced to.

Dina knew that her pain would not just go away. It could not be left behind in Seattle. It would not wash away in a hot shower or be sated like hunger or leave Ellie’s lips like Dina’s name when she came. It seemed immortal, taking every source of sustenance that Dina provided, and then taking Ellie herself when that sustenance ran dry.

Dina had thought that she had dedicated herself to Ellie in leaving with her - but in truth, Joel’s death had wrenched them apart like an explosion, flinging them to different sides of the universe, unseen and unheard by the other.

And perhaps they had been trying to come back to that night, over and over again, each time circling incrementally closer. And when they finally were in view of each other, when Dina finally allowed herself to look - when she finally felt safe enough to look - the recognition that washed over her was jarring and surprising and breathtaking -

 _I know you_.

There was no Ellie After Pain, just like there was no Dina After Pain - pain would dog them all their lives, she knew now. But this - this Ellie that stepped into her arms, that cupped her face as if she were made of glass and looked down at her with so much reverence - this was Ellie with her pain, bright and shining and forgiving and _living_. This was Ellie as she deserved to be.

This was truth.

And Ellie’s “Yes” was so quiet, and the storm in Dina was making her quiver so hard that she thought she would explode, or disintegrate, or become completely untethered. 

But then Ellie’s lips were on hers and one hand was on her cheek and the other was in her hair and it was the gentlest, most tender thing that Dina had ever felt, to be given permission to hold and be held in this way. Her breath caught, and then she melted against Ellie, into her, exhaling through her nose and leaning up to press their bodies even closer together. They were slow and chaste and soft and Dina thought about the creeping warmth of spring and how it burst into summer every year -

Dina opened her mouth a little wider and whimpered as Ellie softly licked at her bottom lip, and pressed Dina flush against her. And then Ellie was _inside_ her mouth, and Dina thought she would turn inward and combust, she was so overwhelmed by the taste and feel of her. It was somehow more open and vulnerable than making love, to let this happen, to let her in. She thought she would drown in it, the deep thrum of recognition that went straight to her bones, _I know you, I know you, I know you…_

If their first kiss had been as unexpected and exhilarating as a flash flood, their not-first-kiss was as smooth and deep as the ocean - a perpetual rhythm, always coming back, over and over, that said _this is my body, but I will let you in too_... _and you’re safe here, and welcome, and loved -_

And then it crashed into her, her wanting, her needing. Dina needed _more_. 

She fisted her hands in Ellie’s shirt and pulled her against her body, until there was no space between them. Ellie chuckled into her mouth and bent down to kiss her again, but Dina angled her head and attacked Ellie’s neck with lips and tongue and teeth, with a heady desperation to taste her again, to take her apart and see her again -

But Ellie’s hands were on her shoulders, gentle but shaking. “Wait, wait...I…” Dina pulled back and looked - Ellie seemed lost for words, and Dina cringed internally at her own impatience.

“I’m sorry,” Dina whispered. “It’s okay.”

“Soon,” Ellie whispered. “Soon, I promise, I just...I...”

“Shh.” Dina pressed a finger to Ellie’s lips. “I’m with you. Take as long as you need.”

“Okay,” Ellie murmured. Her eyes were still hooded and dark, and Dina indulged and leaned forward to capture her lips again. Ellie’s hand tipped her jaw and she deepened the kiss, with so much tenderness that Dina felt like she was drowning in the best way, drowning in _Ellie_ , in her singular focus and sheer depth and wide, flowering expanse of her love.

They broke apart slowly, still breathing each other in, as Ellie rested her forehead against Dina’s. Dina felt unable to catch her breath, unable to acknowledge the realness of the flesh and blood and heartbeat under her fingertips.

Dazed, Dina rested her head in the crook of Ellie’s neck, as she felt Ellie’s arms tighten around her. They stayed like that for a while, swaying together in the half-darkness, holding each other like they were finally found.

“I thought I’d lost you,” Dina whispered, her voice thick and cracking. She inhaled shakily against Ellie’s neck, feeling Ellie’s pulse flutter beneath her mouth. “I thought I would never see you again.”

Ellie’s grip around her body tightened. “I wasn’t...I thought I had to do something,” she murmured, and Dina stiffened at that. “And it took almost doing it to realize that I was wrong. I don’t know if I would have understood any other way. And you didn’t deserve that. I’m sorry.”

Dina pulled back slightly, framing Ellie’s face in her hands, drawing her gaze up. “I want to trust you,” Dina murmured, and Ellie’s brows knitted in response. “But I...I need…” She took a deep, shaking breath. “I need time.”

Ellie’s eyes were huge and unblinking, and her voice left her in a breath. “I will _never_ hurt you or JJ like that ever again. I swear, Dina. I _promise_.”

Dina swallowed, and upon squeezing her eyes shut to center herself, realized that she was crying. “I need more than that.”

“Okay,” Ellie murmured in reply, easy and accepting. She leaned down so that their foreheads touched, their noses brushing. “Let me prove it to you,” Ellie breathed against Dina’s mouth. “Please.”

Dina had not felt prepared before, not even close - but now Ellie was right in front of her, asking for another chance. And now, Dina received her. 

“Okay,” she whispered, lips brushing Ellie’s as she spoke; and then Ellie kissed her again, practically crushing Dina against her, and almost all the air went out of her lungs and Dina didn’t care, because wouldn’t that be just a heavenly way to die? But then oxygen was rushing back, and Ellie was smiling down at her, her eyes shining and her teeth blue-black in the darkness. 

Dina swayed, as if she had just returned to Earth and didn’t know which way was up - Ellie found her hand and threaded their fingers together. 

“I’ll walk you home?”

Was it all that simple? No fanfare, no crashing realization - just pieces slotting together again, fitting because of the work to make them fit. 

Dina felt Ellie slow as they neared her front porch, but she tugged her along, both hands behind her back and gripping Ellie’s. “C’mon,” she said, almost slurring, happy and buzzing - and Ellie relented and followed her, on her heels now. 

JJ scampered up to her when she finally opened the door, with Susan hot on his heels. “I’ve got him,” Dina chuckled, gathering him up in her arms, where he gripped her shirt collar and babbled.

“Momma miss dinner!” he exclaimed, his expression open and surprised as Dina held him closer.

“I know, buddy,” she said, nuzzling his hair. “I had dinner with Mummy.” She edged closer to Ellie, who caught one of JJ’s hands in her own. “Say goodnight, hmm?”

“Goodnight, Spud,” Ellie murmured, leaning in to press a kiss to JJ’s hair. She chuckled and smiled wide when JJ responded by kissing her nose.

“Story?” he asked, and Ellie’s eyes crinkled as she smiled. 

“Maybe tomorrow, buddy,” Dina replied as she inched further into Ellie’s space, sighing happily when Ellie’s hand found her low back.

Ellie leaned close, and Dina felt like she was sharing a secret. “So, um...we should do that again sometime.” 

Dina smiled wide. “Yeah. I’d like that.” She chuckled, freed one arm, and tipped Ellie’s face towards her, so she could press a slow, chaste kiss over her mouth. “Goodnight, Ellie.”

Ellie seemed frozen in place as Dina’s mouth left hers, but she managed a murmured “Goodnight, Dina” before hugging Susan goodbye.

And then Ellie left, and Dina felt like her smile was as bright as a sunbeam when she turned to face Susan. She couldn’t stop the laughter that bubbled up in her throat, even less so when JJ giggled with her.

“You’re happy, Momma,” he said as he wound his arms around her neck.

“I wonder why,” Susan added with a knowing smile, and Dina just ducked her head and buried her face in JJ’s shirt.

* * *

Part of Dina had anticipated slipping back into their old patterns immediately, their old push and pull. But there was less to slip into and more to start, a fact that was made all the more clear by the fact that they weren’t living together, at least not now. 

It wasn’t like their distance, back at Jackson before everything, or at the farmhouse. It was closer than that in some ways - a soft smile exchanged as they passed each other in town, Dina letting her hand linger on Ellie’s arm before she left for the day. All of those micro-interactions and symbols of intimacy that Dina had fixated on when she was younger - the easy ways with which she could know a person.

And Ellie wasn’t beholden to Dina’s schedule, not like she had been at the farmhouse. Dina missed it, that consistency of having a person around all the time; but it was an old ache, one that was easier for her to shrug off now, in favor of reaching for those shiny new places.

Ellie insisted on walking her home each time they did something together, no matter how long they were out. As was typical, Ellie would hang back as they approached Dina’s porch - and Dina couldn’t help but wonder what it would take for Ellie to stop offering so many ways out. 

Dina would tug her along by her hand, and tell her to kiss her son goodnight, and then lead her to the front porch again. There, they would share a sweet, soft kiss and a moment of closeness.

Sometimes Dina would turn in her arms and fold Ellie’s hands in front of her belly, smiling as Ellie nuzzled the crook of her neck. It was an old holdover from when she was pregnant, when they would put on slow music and sway together in their farmhouse, caught up in their new little life. 

Dina had to remind herself that she wasn’t doing this to hold up their old life as some beacon they were aiming for. No - she did this because she wanted, from the very start of things, for Ellie to know that this was her family.

But almost everything was tinged with a newness that Dina couldn’t quite recognize. She would sometimes see Ellie in town, far away from her, farther than Dina anticipated - and it was like she had been thrown back in time to when she was fifteen, either watching Ellie from afar or interacting with her in that prescribed way that new friends fit around each other.

And then it dawned on Dina one day - their old casual intimacy was gone. 

At first she wanted to mourn it, to mourn the loss of all those tiny invisible ties and tells that bound her to another person. And it scared her, that these things that seemed so indelible when they were living together could be erased so easily. 

It was slow and tentative, building that web again. Part of Dina burned for it - a fact that was highly exacerbated by the fact that they hadn’t even approached having sex yet - and another part of her, the highly-observant part, was fascinated at the sight of their new growth.

Before, Dina had always considered herself to be something of an expert when it came to Ellie - but now, it felt like she was seeing Ellie clearly for the first time, seeing those parts of her that had been partially revealed when they were younger, or half-obscured in Seattle, or hazy and transmuted at their farmhouse.

It was terrifying. It was thrilling.

It dogged her through all manner of her tasks, until Dina asked Ellie to come with her and JJ to pick up produce. She needed the easy rhythms and chatter of the grocer, needed a way to clear her head. 

Dina weighed a potato in her palm, and looked up to see Ellie turning in a slow circle near the apples, JJ in her arms.

“What color are tomatoes, JJ?”

“Red!” Ellie smiled down at him. “Red like Mummy!” He grasped for Ellie’s hair, close to falling out of its half up-do anyways, and Ellie chuckled.

Dina let a smile grow on her face as she watched them, returning to her canvas bag. She nudged Ellie as she approached. “Hey, they have squash.”

Ellie made a face. “Spaghetti squash, _ergh_ …”

“Okay, Miss ‘I Eat Pasta for All My Meals’,” Dina teased.

Ellie brought a hand to her mouth, pretending to gasp. “You take that back!”

“And you’re still a string bean, too,” Dina replied, rubbing Ellie’s back absently.

“But I’m _your_ string bean,” Ellie murmured, and Dina smiled and accepted the light kiss that Ellie pressed to her temple. 

The past several weeks had passed with both incredible slowness and incredible speed. And Ellie - the Ellie she knew, the Ellie she had grown up with - came to Dina in pieces, slivers, flashes. 

Sometimes it reminded Dina of when they were fifteen, when Ellie vibrated on her porch in excitement, and tugged Dina along by her hand when she came to the door.

“Where are we going?” 

Of course, Ellie had never told her until they got there.

Maybe they were going through the same exercises now, the same phases. This thought was at the forefront of Dina’s mind later in the day when - after the produce had been stashed in her fridge, after JJ had been dropped off at his grandparents' house - Ellie appeared on her porch, looking bashful and shy.

“Can I take you somewhere?”

Before, Ellie had injected brash, exasperated humor into her voice - “It’s a _surprise_.”

Dina had scoffed then - “You don’t do surprises, El” - and then she practically heard Ellie roll her eyes in response. “Pfft. I’m, like, the surprise master.”

And when Ellie tugged her to the top of the guard tower - empty, mercifully; Dina wouldn’t have put it past Ellie to take her on some circuitous route to avoid whoever was on duty that evening - Dina had to acquiesce. When Ellie planned these things, she was pretty damn good at them.

Everything was hidden, secretive, shared between just them. They had been higher than everything, except for the birds in the sky and the clouds above them. “Tal’s gonna kill me if she finds out I did this.”

Ellie had scoffed. “Well, was it worth it?”

Now, Dina pulled herself through the trapdoor, letting nostalgia wash over her like the warmth of the setting sun. Ellie stood off to the side, rubbing the back of her neck, and helped Dina to her feet. Dina let her eyes pass over the blankets that had been put down, before walking to the edge of the tower and looking out.

“We haven’t been up here in awhile.”

“No.” Ellie shrugged. “Thought it could be nice.”

Dina hummed, watching the setting sun glint and glow below them. “Nice view, huh?”

“Haven’t you used that line before?”

Dina met Ellie’s gaze and shrugged. “Worked pretty well last time.”

Ellie looked away, chuckling, and Dina watched her bite her lip. She pressed on a little more. “Is it working now?”

Ellie’s fingertips traced Dina’s jaw, soft and light and warm, and somehow she was closer now, close enough that Dina could count each freckle on her face, could watch her pupils dilate, see the sun reflect back in her irises.

“Hey,” Dina breathed, unable to dampen the smile that came to her.

“Hi.” Ellie’s breath was warm against Dina’s mouth. And then Ellie inched forward and kissed her, slow and soft and full, and Dina swore she couldn’t stop smiling if she tried.

A flickering laugh escaped her mouth then, making them break apart slightly. “Sorry,” Dina giggled. Ellie pulled away then, as Dina’s eyes fluttered open. 

“Is this okay?”

“Yeah,” Dina breathed. “C’mere.” And Ellie kissed her again - with sweet, slow rhythmic intention. Dina sighed against her mouth - at the warmth under her fingertips and then against her body as Ellie gathered her in her arms. God, she had missed the slow, purposeful way Ellie kissed her - like time didn’t exist, like there was nothing to do in the world but Dina how much she wanted her.

They broke apart, smiling and glancing away from each other, and then Ellie inclined her head. “Wanna sit down?”

Dina sat onto the blankets and pulled Ellie down with her, leaning into her body as she settled. “How did you know this would be empty?”

One side of Ellie’s mouth curled into a smile, and she scoffed slightly. “I...may have asked Maria about it.”

Dina chuckled at that. “So if Jackson gets ambushed, it’s your fault.” Ellie frowned at that, pulling a grimace, and Dina backtracked immediately. She brushed a lock of hair behind Ellie’s ear and kissed her shoulder. “I love it, baby.”

Ellie smiled and nuzzled her in return. “Good.”

Dina leaned back onto her elbows, trying to ignore the feeling of opening a door too quickly. When Ellie settled down further and inched closer into Dina’s side, Dina let her head tip onto Ellie’s shoulder, let herself relax.

They stayed like that, in silence, as the evening around them darkened just so. Streaks of clouds, painted in bright pinks and oranges, were still bright on the horizon. Dina inhaled as a cool breeze washed over her.

At some point Ellie shifted, putting tension into her body for a moment, and Dina waited. And this time -

“Can I hold you?”

Dina had to stop herself from cracking a grin as she eased into her answer. “Of course.” Ellie’s arms went around her, and she didn’t seem as thin as she’d been, as liable to be blown away. She felt solid, heavy, present. Dina tangled their legs together, propped herself up on one elbow, and brushed a lock of hair out of Ellie’s face. She yawned hugely.

“Sleeping okay?”

“On and off,” Dina replied, sighing. She let her eyes drift closed as she rested her forehead against the crook of Ellie’s neck, just breathing in her scent. Ellie’s arm rounded her back, and she nuzzled a little closer.

“You still having nightmares?”

Ellie’s voice was soft against the crown of her head, though Dina also felt it vibrate through her chest. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Yeah. Mostly about Tal.” Ellie’s thumb brushed her cheek, and she leaned into it. “Sometimes about you and JJ.” She felt Ellie swallow, felt her hand migrate to her upper back, where it rubbed small circles there. Ellie exhaled against the top of her head, and Dina could practically feel her thinking.

“And me leaving?”

Dina curled closer and swallowed hard. Her voice cracked when she spoke, and an old grief eased through.

“Yeah.” The pressure on her back firmed, and Dina shook minutely. A whimper escaped from her mouth when Ellie tightened both arms around her and cradled her close. 

“It’s okay,” Ellie murmured. “I’m here. JJ’s safe. Talia…” Ellie drew back and tipped Dina’s face up, so that their eyes met. “Talia loves you.” Ellie’s expression was open, serious, and Dina’s breath caught. They hung there, on a precipice. 

“I love you.”

Oh, _god_ -

Dina inhaled, and she couldn’t _breathe -_ and would it be a fucking cliche, to give in to her now, to seek her body again? 

“Kiss me,” Dina whispered, fisting her hands in Ellie’s shirt, and Ellie inclined her head and leaned in. 

Her lips were soft against Dina’s, giving and chaste, and Dina sighed at the warmth. She felt Ellie shift over her, pushing her back just slightly, all solid, safe pressure. Dina inhaled and kissed her back, arching slightly, winding her arms around Ellie’s neck, needing her closer.

It came to her naturally then, because it was true and easy - and not because it would solve all their problems but because Ellie deserved to know. And she, Dina, deserved to know too -

“I love you,” Dina whimpered. “I love you so much.” And a noise left Ellie’s throat, something desperate and relieved, and Dina didn’t have time to process it before Ellie was kissing her again.

Dina sighed at each soft, chaste kiss that Ellie pressed against her neck. She played with the hair at the base of Ellie’s neck, where her bun was loose. The mess came down with a few soft tugs.

Ellie’s hair didn’t fall past her shoulders, and it curled naturally with the bun it had sat in. Dina carded her fingers gently through it, and it seemed so fucking surreal, so fucking _normal_ , to run her hands through Ellie’s hair while Ellie kissed her neck.

And Dina had to ask, had to know. “Do you want to touch me?”

Ellie pulled back, her features were suffused with open surprise. “Can I?”

“Yes,” Dina gasped. “Yes, yes…” She squirmed out of her t-shirt, so that only her undershirt remained, and leaned back into their blankets. And Ellie was on her again, kissing her mouth, traveling down to her neck, her collarbones. 

Dina couldn’t help it - she gasped when Ellie pressed her mouth against one clothed breast. “Baby,” she whimpered. 

Their old rhythm was right _there_ , and it was so easy - to lean into it, to let it sweep them both up. Dina gasped and cried out - “ _Fuck_ ” - and Ellie was right there with her - “Yeah?”

“ _Yes_ , baby -” And Dina arched and shook. “God, Ellie, that’s so good…” 

Everything was warm and soft, and there was nothing but Ellie, between her legs and at her breasts and in her ear; her pulse, under Dina’s mouth; her voice, rich and sweet; and her body, gone for so long and now _here_ , touching and loving Dina. 

Every place she touched was pure fire and relief, and all Dina could do was hold on, shaking and whimpering and twitching, all of her love leaving her lips over and over and over - “Ellie, Ellie, _Ellie_ -”

Ellie knew how to touch her, Ellie knew how to _love_ her...

And Dina’s body seemed to freeze and jerk at the same time, as high, sweet moans left her mouth, muffled by her hand - and she shook and collapsed and let go, and Ellie’s voice drifted over her - “Oh my God, oh my God, Dina…”

Dina’s breath came back to her first, in great gulps - and then her vision, and then feeling, as her head buzzed and her heart thrummed, as her very body seemed to vibrate against the floor...

“Fuck,” Ellie breathed. “Fuck, did you just…Did you...”

Dina giggled, feeling high. “Shit…” She came down quickly, gasping, trying to bring herself back together. “That was good, Ellie, I -” Dina reached for her, but there was nothing. And then her body went colder, as she watched Ellie run a hand through her hair, shock written on her face.

“Do you want me to touch you?” 

Dina felt small as she asked, like it was a trivial thing, a selfish thing. And when Ellie told her to wait, to stop, Dina was unsurprised. 

“Hey.” Dina reached for her, but Ellie drew back, shrinking in on herself. She trembled. 

“I’m sorry, Dina,” she gasped. “ _Fuck_ , I’m sorry -”

“It’s okay, hey…” Dina made to stand, but Ellie was on her feet first, gathering the blanket in her arms, babbling -

“This was so stupid, I’m sorry, I’m sorry -”

“ _Ellie_.” Dina voice firmed, her hands on either side of Ellie’s face, trying to pull her back. _No, no, no, don’t take her away from me, please no_ -

Ellie was breathing hard now, quivering and shaking - and then her face pulled, crumpled, and she inhaled brokenly, and words tumbled out of her mouth like they had been wrenched from her -

“I’m not _good_ , Dina.”

“Baby -”

But Ellie had wrenched the trapdoor open, and she was climbing down - stumbling on the last few rungs of the ladder and colliding with the ground with a gasp and a soft _thud_ , as Dina called after her - and then she was gone.

Dina sat back, gasping, and scrubbed furiously at her eyes. She tugged her t-shirt back on, and let her hands linger along her neck where Ellie had kissed her - as if she could memorize the sensation, burn it into her body.

It came to her in a chill, then - what good was repeating the past, if they would simply circle back to failure again?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this chapter gave me hell, and the ending came to me literally 30 minutes before I posted it. Que sera, sera, I suppose.
> 
> Find me on tumblr @watery-sun. Cheers!


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy almost-New Year, y'all! Please forgive any remaining typos - I've had a difficult couple of weeks.

The path from the hospital was a torturous cycle under Ellie’s feet, a neverending runway that she crashed onto again and again. There was iron in her mouth and twitching, gripping pain coursing on her skin and her heart thumping high in her throat. The bracelet burned on her wrist, all wrong wrong wrong. 

The luck here was the gaping maw in the hospital basement, oozing with spores and red like blood; the words that came all too easily too her lips, as if she had practiced them in her head until they were rote (but she had, she had, she had, and she’s lying to herself again); and that tiny, gasping, bloodied sound that left Nora’s lips - _aquarium._

And then the luck was gone, fizzled out, crashing around her, because that wasn’t what a person was supposed to sound like, or look like, and she had to get out, get out, get _out_ -

It happened as she went to remove the barricade from the door - an inhuman, keening noise that churned in her gut and bubbled out of her mouth. She never could quite register a sound, just the edges of it leaving her throat - part scream and part cry and all hot, bitter pain.

She dragged herself out of the ground and saw that the sun was almost down by now, nothing but light glinting off the pools of brackish water that surrounded the hospital. She eviscerated the few stragglers that stumbled into her path, all harsh angles and hot wet and wild eyes and hardly human. All stains bled together, eventually, eventually...

Where the _fuck_ was the theater?

Without much illumination, at least she could pretend that the slumped forms that littered the ground were infected, long dead, taken back into the earth. 

“We put stones on graves,” Dina had told her, eyes rimmed red, shifting from foot to foot. The wind ripped at her hair, and Ellie wanted to tuck it behind her ear, to run her fingers through it. Instead, she knelt, placing her stone with her left hand, as Dina had instructed. 

There had been no grave marker for Riley - no flowers for her happiness, no _mitzvah_ of placing a stone where she was buried. Just heated, gasping shock and confusion and tears; and then Marlene’s hands, strong on Ellie’s shoulders, steering her away; and then words, plans, always a _next place_ , always, always…

Ellie’s foot caught on something and she fell, body skidding onto cold, hard, wet. The air left her lungs, and she curled in on herself for one fucking stupid moment, prone and gasping brokenly -

Should she have buried Nora? Carried her remains out of that flickering hell, up into the open air, where the loam was rich and soft and still cradled life? Would it be pathetic? A pathetic atonement, in front of a god she barely believed in - a useless chant that rose higher and higher in her throat, _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry_ …

She had to get to the fucking theater. She had to get to Dina -

She had expected to find more, more fight, more anger darting into her path, flailing at her clumsily with their knives and fists and guns and falling all too easily. But all was quiet - there was no creeping danger, no enemy laying in wait. The absence of their regard felt like a sick bereavement. 

Then she fell again, the slab of concrete rising to meet her, smacking into her cheek with its grit and cold, as her breath left her body -

And Joel was in front of her again, broken and bleeding and dying and still -

 _Help me_ , she thought, her fuzzy mind coalescing to one thing, as if she could make it real. _Come back_ …

Why had she never told him? That she _needed_ him - needed him to take a bloodied machete out of her hands and hold her again, needed him to tell her that it was okay, that _she_ was okay, that he was here, that he l-

“Ellie?”

And Ellie came back to herself with a jolt.

She was shifting from foot to foot, stilling a shaking hand, and Dina was in front of her, peering around an open door. Her hair was still mussed, her eyes bleary, sleeping clothes rumpled - but she was in front of Ellie all the same.

Ellie was speaking before she realized it. “I’m so sorry, Dina. I don’t know what that was, but you didn’t deserve it, I’m -”

Ellie watched Dina sigh as she spoke, watched her breathe deeply and exhale, watched for disappointment or resignation to wash over her features -

“Come here,” Dina murmured, and she took Ellie in her arms.

Ellie sagged against her body and buried her head in the crook of Dina’s neck. She was still murmuring - “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry” - as Dina’s hands traveled up and down her back in soft, soothing motions.

It felt pathetic, undeserved, and there was that part of Ellie again - the part that wanted to rip herself away from Dina, away from her touch, because Ellie was _contaminated_...

But still, she held on, breathed in Dina’s scent of chamomile. Finally, Dina unwound Ellie’s arms from around her, so that she held them between their bodies. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Ellie answered without thinking. “Yes, I just...I…”

But Dina was shaking her head. “We both know that’s not true.”

Her words soft, but something like fear rose in Ellie then, like bile - and she babbled, voice edging higher and higher. “I can be better, Dina, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry -”

“Hey, hush.” Dina stepped close again, one hand on Ellie’s cheek, and Ellie leaned into her touch. “We’ll talk about it, okay? Over lunch?”

“Not now?” Ellie asked, brows knitting together.

“I have to get JJ up -”

Ellie couldn’t help herself - couldn’t help but see that Dina was pulling away again, back to some place where Ellie can’t reach her. “I can help -”

“El.” Dina’s voice was so soft, but there was an edge to it now that made Ellie want to cower. Dina rubbed her arms firmly. “You’re trembling, baby.”

“I’m sorry -”

“ _Hush_. Go rest, okay?” Dina’s eyes were wide, concerned, and Ellie swallowed, feeling altogether too awkward under Dina’s gaze.

“Okay. Okay. Lunch.”

“Lunch,” Dina repeated with a smile. “Take this.” She placed a raggedy sweatshirt in Ellie’s arms, helped pull it down over her body. Then she leaned up and kissed Ellie lightly, nuzzled her.

“I love you,” Ellie gasped as she pulled away, and Dina looked up at her in puzzlement for a second.

“I love you too, baby,” she murmured, before gently unwinding Ellie’s arms from where Ellie had set them around her neck. “Now go, alright?”

And Ellie went, although it felt like she was leaving half of herself back with Dina - a rotting, twisted version of herself that she needed to explain, immediately, _now_ , because that _wasn’t_ her anymore, it wasn’t -

Ellie cut through an alleyway, set on circumnavigating the main drag of town, even though it was sparsely occupied in the early hour. She didn’t realize how hard she was breathing until she was on the other side of her door, propped up against it.

Taking her guitar in hand was more second-nature at this point, an old reflex. Some chords came easier now, but some grew and grew in her mind, into thickets of spiked, overgrown things that she could not touch. Joel would have known what to do about those ones, somehow.

Would she have told him? How she was scared to touch Dina and JJ? How it felt like a poison, to want love and affection and care after what she had done? How it gnawed at her from the inside out, until she felt hollowed, a shell...

Maybe they would have come to understand each other better: two people who had done unforgivable things, who had no right to demand that forgiveness, and who had to find a way to keep going anyways.

"So...what's going on?"

It startled her that Dina was talking about the previous night, and not two years ago, even though the timelines were irrevocably linked in Ellie’s head - because one bled into the other so closely.

Ellie wanted to apologize again, and the words were out of her mouth before she could stop herself. She spoke to the coffee table instead of Dina, to the sandwich Dina had prepared for her.

“I know, Ellie. It’s okay.” Ellie just buried her face in her hands, just sighed. 

“I shouldn’t have touched you,” Ellie said into her palms. “I shouldn’t...it was too fast. For me.”

“Okay,” Dina murmured. One of her hands went to move in a warm circle on Ellie’s back. “We can slow down. Whatever you want.”

And that should have been good enough, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t - and Dina was surely going to leave her now, when Ellie told her why she was here. But the words left her mouth, to her horror - “I can’t, I can’t do this…”

Dina was still beside her, steadfast. “You can, Ellie. Hey, you can -”

“Do you know what I did out there, Dina?” Ellie’s voice was harsher than she intended, but then everything about this was harsh, angry, raw -

“Out -” 

“In Seattle. In Santa Barbara. I -”

\- blood and jagged limbs and cries and mouths gaping like wounds -

“I...I know what people look like on the inside, Dina. When they’re dying. How they _move_ , how -” She gasped, and she was trembling now, as shivering words left her mouth. “The sounds they make, the way they cry, they beg -”

\- grass underfoot and wet, cold mud and the hot graze of a bullet -

Ellie twisted the hem of her shirt in her hands violently, quaking and gasping.

“They all say the same things, Dina. They want the same things, their family, their friends. They _pray_ -”

\- _I said one at Joel’s grave. I said one when we left Jackson...It’s what I know…_ -

“Who will forgive me, Dina, I _need_ it, _help_ me -”

“Hey.” And Dina’s hands were firm on her shoulders. “Hey…” She cradled Ellie close, against her chest. The next words, Ellie sensed, were ones that Dina had practiced over and over to herself, exactly for a situation like this, when Ellie was begging her for something that could not be given. 

“I can’t do this for you, baby. You have to forgive yourself.”

And Ellie broke.

She shuddered and cried, and Dina rocked them both back and forth - kissed her hair, rubbed her back. It took Ellie a moment to realize that Dina was singing, voice low, in a language Ellie couldn’t understand - but it was a song she recognized, one that Dina sang to JJ when he was a newborn, when he couldn’t quiet -

“I don’t know how, Dina,” she whimpered. “I don’t know how…” Her conversation with Cat swirled around in her head, but Ellie shied away from it, cowering.

Ellie didn’t know how long they stayed like that, how long she spilled her pain and Dina let it wash over her. But then Dina spoke, and her voice was firm and solid, like she had made a decision for the both of them.

“Come back this evening and help me make dinner, okay? God knows your son is of no help in the kitchen.”

Ellie felt a smile pull at the side of her mouth. She hiccuped and took a shuddering breath. “And you think I’ll be any better?”

“At least you listen to me,” Dina murmured, and she leaned forward to kiss Ellie’s cheek. “Right?” 

Ellie scrubbed at her eyes and looked up to find Dina staring at her, unwavering, lips curled in a small smile. She exhaled, exhaustion suddenly coming over her. “Right,” she breathed, and she closed her eyes, rested her forehead against Dina’s. “Right.”

* * *

It wasn’t the first time that Ellie had broken down in recent weeks.

It occurred to her that violence wasn’t the only cycle she had caught herself in. The mind returned too, over and over and over, desperate for penance - asking why, asking how. It was like an old record that skipped at the same place every time - every moment leading up to it was sickly and tight with anticipation, _it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen_. And every moment afterwards was wrung-out and empty and exhausted. There was no here or now, not anymore.

Her therapist’s response was all too concise and all too true. “You’re treating every day like it builds perfectly on the previous one.”

 _Shouldn’t it?_ Ellie thought to herself. Wasn’t that what normalcy was, that steady climb up towards happiness? “Things are _worse_ now.”

“Ellie, you know you’re a survivor, right?”

 _Survivor_. There it was, that word that stuck in her craw, that made her crawl under her blankets at home and cry...

And then she got up, and kept going.

Part of her was adamant - _There are still things to be done, right?_

 _I suppose_ , she responded to herself - and then she saw Dina’s smile or heard JJ’s laugh, and it was all a little more okay.

Then, really, trauma _was_ a circle, an orbit. It was going back, again and again and again, to more and more familiar places, with more and more sure-footedness. 

More and more, Ellie realized that she felt better after she cried, after she had gone through that cycle - that _physiological cascade_ , as her therapist had called it. The cycle, that wanted to be completed. Her emotions, that wanted to move on.

So she let them.

* * *

Ellie fiddled with the sleeve of her shirt, buttoning and unbuttoning the cuff. She watched her fingers move in the mirror. She hadn’t worn this shirt since before. It sat in a box in the farmhouse, untouched, too large on her body - all the negative space encroaching further and further around her withering frame.

Now, she thought curtly, she looked human-shaped, at least. She’d filled out this old piece of her life.

Dina had asked her for one thing. At first, Ellie was incredulous - Dina should ask her for whatever she wants, she thought. Whatever Dina wants, and Ellie would bend space and time to bring it to her. But it was none of that. It was one thing.

At least once a week, they went out together. Anywhere, it didn’t matter - as long as it was just the two of them. They went out, and they talked.

Ellie was confused at first, why it just had to be them. They could talk around JJ and Susan and Robin, couldn’t they? 

But she knew that this went back further than all of them, back to when it was just her and Dina - surviving together in Jackson, hiding parts of themselves from each other.

Ellie wanted to feel ashamed, that she and Dina had to start over like this. That it was all a reminder of how she had hid from Dina from the start, how she wasn’t honest with her from the beginning.

But Dina was so vibrant when Ellie told her anything new - riveted, hanging on every word. Ellie couldn’t help but wonder if part of her reaction was apologetic.

 _I did tell you a real fucking story_.

Dina had only tried to touch her there once, in the low light of the Tipsy Bison one evening. They were pressed together in a booth, loose and tipsy from their watered-down drinks. Dina started tracing her tattoo, gentle and reverent and warm; and then the whole flat of her palm was on Ellie’s forearm, inching up; and then -

“Stop.”

Dina withdrew immediately, but Ellie caught her hand. She placed their intertwined fingers on the table in front of them.

“I’m sorry,” Dina had breathed, brows knitting together. Ellie just kissed her temple - “I know” - and tried to remind herself that boundaries were just as much a part of love as openness.

Now, Dina was soft and simple in her sweater and jeans, and she laughed behind a hand when JJ asked Ellie to pick him up. Ellie acquiesced immediately.

The walk to Robin and Susan’s was short enough that Ellie’s anxiety didn’t have time to ramp up, and she felt a genuine laugh leave her mouth when she set JJ down in the foyer and he ran off like a rocket.

He came back to them a minute later, a toy truck clutched in his grasp, giggling as Dina knelt and set her hands on his shoulders.

“Will you be good for Grandmama and Grandpa while we’re out?”

“Truck!” JJ replied.

“I think that means ‘yes’,” Ellie whispered under her breath, and Dina rolled her eyes in response.

Ellie accepted Susan’s warm hug and then dawdled, watching Dina laugh at something Robin had said. 

“Ready to go?” Dina murmured as she approached Ellie again, setting a hand on her arm. Ellie’s stomach flipped. “I’ll be back in a few hours, Susan. Don’t worry about keeping him overnight,” Dina called over her shoulder, and then she steered Ellie outside.

Ellie let Dina lead, content to run her thumb over Dina’s knuckles. She occasionally leaned back and walked on her heels so that Dina had to almost drag her, scoffing at how lazy she was before pulling her close and pecking her on the lips.

“So,” Dina murmured, leaning into Ellie’s side. “You were saying?”

“That I stole a horse the first time I came to Jackson?”

Dina snickered behind her hand, and now Ellie pulled her along, down another circuitous path back through her life.

This was the beautiful thing about Dina - how she could lead them to a new place without putting Ellie under a microscope, without dressing it up in the trappings of a necessary, mechanical conversation.

At some point, Ellie let go of Dina’s hand and slipped her arm around her waist, tucking her closer into her side. Ellie examined the satisfaction that washed over her - at how far they had come since the night in the guard tower, and the evening after.

Dinner preparations had come easy, as Ellie washed vegetables and chopped potatoes. She ladled salad onto her plate, speared a piece of chicken with her fork. Susan steered the conversation towards Joel’s cooking, and Ellie came to his defense - it was a widespread myth that Joel hadn’t known how to cook well, and Ellie was set on dispelling it.

Then JJ put up a ruckus at the vegetables in front of him. “Aww, you loved peas last week, kiddo,” Ellie murmured. “Okay, okay. Carrots it is.” And then she felt Dina’s eyes on her again.

Later, there was just the sound of Susan in the living room with JJ, and the clink of the dishes in the sink as Ellie washed them. And then Dina’s hand was on her back, her voice low.

“You said you couldn’t infect me.”

Ellie turned, hands still covered in suds. “Huh?”

Dina stepped closer, and Ellie set down the plate she was holding. “You said you couldn’t infect me. And you can’t.” 

Ellie frowned. “I don’t…”

“Ellie…” And Dina was right up in Ellie’s space, eyes wide, voice firm. “I walked to and from Seattle while _pregnant_ , taking down infected all the way. I renovated a farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere, read _way_ too many books about animal husbandry, and packed up my life and took it back to Jackson when the time came.”

Ellie glanced down, shame rising in her. But Dina’s fingertips were on Ellie’s jaw, tipping it up so that their eyes met. Her voice was so soft.

“You won’t infect me, baby.”

And all of Ellie’s breath left her in a long, sudden sigh. “Okay,” she whispered, and her voice was high and tight with understanding. “Okay.”

Now, Dina pulled her into the narrow space between two buildings, and Ellie almost startled - the dark was for hiding and stalking and killing -

 _No_ , Dina’s hands said, tucking a lock of hair behind Ellie’s ear, caressing her face, drawing her down. The dark, her body said, was for secrets and love and pleasure, for deep breaths and soft sighs.

“Okay?” Dina murmured against her mouth, and Ellie hummed in assent, inclining her head to deepen their kiss. 

They breathed each other in and Ellie let Dina work her hands under her shirt, splayed against the soft skin of her abdomen. Dina rubbed aimless little circles on her sides, her belly, and Ellie felt herself flicker into relaxation.

Then Dina spoke, voice soft. “Do you want to touch me?”

 _Out here_ , Ellie thought, _where anyone could see?_ Where anyone could see and know that she, Ellie - covered in blood that wasn’t her own, so much that it stained her skin red no matter how viciously she scrubbed at it - thought that she still deserved this, this body that thrummed for her?

But then her hands were moving anyways, slipping under Dina’s sweater to settle on the curve of her waist. Her thumbs rubbed circles on the ridges of Dina’s hipbones and Dina hummed happily.

They stayed in that place, all soft darkness. Dina nuzzled at Ellie’s throat and whispered little secrets against her skin - “Do you know how much I love you?” Ellie just tucked Dina closer into the curve of her body. 

Then they heard someone approaching and scurried away like teenagers, caught where they shouldn’t be, muffling laughter behind their hands.

And one day, it turned out, wasn’t enough for Ellie. Not even close.

It started in earnest when she left a photo album over at Dina’s - a slim one, mostly with pictures from Joel’s house. When Dina showed up the next morning on the doorstep of her studio with it in hand, Ellie gently declined her offer. “It should be with JJ.”

“Then you should be with him when he looks through it,” Dina replied, voice firm.

It turned out that JJ was still liable to fall asleep in Ellie’s lap whenever she talked to him about these photos, but she figured he’d get the message one day. 

“Sleepy, sleepy Potato,” she murmured one evening, sing-song, gathering him up in her arms. “Let’s go find Momma, hmm?”

But Dina wasn’t in the kitchen, or the living room, or her bedroom. Ellie finally found her upstairs in her study, arms on her desk and head pillowed on them. She was fully asleep in the low light.

Streaks of the setting sunlight still played across her back and Ellie touched her there, rubbing soft circles until Dina stirred. She flickered back to wakefulness, inhaling sharply and sitting up in jerky movements. Some of the papers underneath her arms shifted and fluttered to the floor.

“Oh, damn.” Dina’s voice was rough and low, though the worry lines between her brows smoothed over when she looked up. “Need to finish -”

“I got it,” Ellie murmured, placing JJ in her arms, where he snuggled into the crook of her neck. Ellie plucked the fallen papers from the floor, straightened them with the ones on Dina’s desk. They were covered in diagrams and schematics she didn’t recognize. “For Maria?”

“Mhmm,” Dina hummed, before yawning hugely. “Still don’t know when I’ll make it out to the grocer again.” Her voice dipped down to gravelly disappointment, but she looked up when Ellie tucked a wiry lock of hair behind her ear.

“I’ll go, yeah?” When Dina hummed her assent, Ellie leaned over and kissed the crown of her head, nuzzled her there for a moment. “What else am I good for?”

“ _Baby_ ,” Dina chided in exasperation, and Ellie raised her hands in front of herself in mock self-defense - “I know, I know.”

Self-deprecation aside, they slipped into a new routine, cobbled together as they slowly worked out who had time for what and when - who could go to the butcher to pick up the brisket; who was going to watch JJ while Dina was out on repairs post-thunderstorm, and Robin was stuck doing inventory at the greenhouses all day; what Dina needed from the grocer and who had time to go, and _no_ , they did not need more pasta, not with how much Ellie ate of it these days.

“Are you _sure_ , babe?” Ellie murmured in Dina’s ear, running her hands over Dina’s shoulders. Dina sighed through her smile - “You’re _distracting_ me” - and Ellie retreated, leaving her to the laundry.

But Dina caught her at the door anyways, one hand on her shoulder. “Don’t forget the canned tomatoes, yeah?”

“If they have them,” Ellie replied, smiling playfully. Dina just rolled her eyes, tipped Ellie’s chin up, and kissed her lightly.

“They’ll have them,” Dina said as she pulled away. “Now _go_.”

And Ellie went, feeling lighter than she ever had with Dina at her back.

* * *

The grain of the wood was a dark swirl, rich in browns and golds and ambers underneath its lacquer. Ellie traced it with a finger, watching the light reflect fuzzily. The chatter of the bar pressed down around her like a soft, muffling blanket, all present and all indistinguishable. 

A figure hobbled into view from the blur of the crowd, and Ellie looked up and Tommy was there, one side of his mouth curled up in a smile. She didn’t get up while he arranged his limbs to sit down.

“How’s that boy of yours?” he asked, and Ellie knew that today would be one of their easier ones. She traced the rim of her water glass and leaned back into her chair. His good eye met hers when she answered.

The first time she had seen Tommy since returning to Jackson had been in flashes and glimmers - the shape of a familiar body in her periphery; the contour of a familiar voice in the chatter of conversation; and, first in short durations and then for a long stretch of time until recently, overheard whispers that situated him out of town entirely.

They hadn’t spoken in person until the spring after her return - although, if she was honest with herself, Ellie would admit that she had taken every step to let these interactions fade into the corners of her mind, where they would sometimes stir and roil but would eventually settle again. Dina and JJ and her friends - and yes, she would add resolutely, herself - were top of mind.

Tommy, to his credit, seemed to follow a similar tact.

Something had softened in him. Ellie couldn’t pinpoint it exactly, as she watched him approach that first time - whether it was the new, slight drag to his lopsided gait, or the way he kept his hands in his coat pockets even though an unseasonably warm breeze washed over them.

Ellie pushed off of the fence post she had been leaning against, kicking a rock absently and shoving her own hands in her pockets. She didn’t look up until he spoke first.

“I don’t need to hear about Santa Barbara.”

Ellie frowned, lifting her gaze to Tommy’s downturned one. “Did Maria put you up to this?”

At Tommy’s scoff, Ellie could surmise the current state of his and Maria’s relationship without much difficulty. Still, she waited.

Tommy shifted from foot to foot, and there was so much of Joel in his posture and his waffling that Ellie felt her throat tighten. Finally he spoke, haltingly.

“I...What I did was wrong. Shouldn’t have pushed you away from your family.” There was apology and grief in his voice, and Ellie had to tamp down the guilt that crested in her.

_I don’t sleep. I don’t eat. I’m not like you, Dina._

Ellie bit her lip, wavering, finding her voice. “If it wasn’t you, it would have been something else.” Tommy nodded and rubs his palms together, exhaling.

“What about now?”

Ellie took a deep breath, feeling it go all the way down to her toes. Her voice was a little stronger when she spoke next. “I’m staying.”

Tommy nodded, and his next words sounded like the easiest for him to speak since they started talking. “That’s good.”

Ellie didn’t tell Maria about this first conversation, kept it pressed close to her chest. She hardly acknowledged it for months, letting it drift around in her orbit and bump into other thoughts from time to time. 

“You’re still family,” Ellie had said. At the time, she didn’t know if it had been a desperate plea, a prayer for herself as much as it was for him - because in some ways, he _was_ her.

He had that darkness in him too - that twisted, dying thing that spoke with his mouth and walked with his limbs and was so alien that you tried to pretend it wasn’t you, it _couldn’t_ be.

The second time they spoke, he looked haggard and thinner. “Been staying up at the dam,” he said to her questioning gaze. “Sound o’ the running water helps me sleep.”

Ellie nodded. “Nightmares?”

“Just the usual,” he replied, shrugging, and then their conversation drifted into scant thoughts about Jackson, that old mooring to which they tethered themselves in this choppy current.

The third time, Ellie found him, high up on the walls. It was one of the only places he could still patrol, although it was hardly even that. Ellie leaned away as Tommy went to peek over the offside, directing her gaze back towards the center of town. Tommy whistled, and muttered some comment about the height and the wind and a feeling of flying.

At one point Ellie stopped, looking out at the darkening forest that extended towards a jagged horizon. Her voice came to her like something unwilling, something that knew the way forward and still resisted.

“I hear them.” Tommy only met her with a questioning look, so she pushed on. “I hear them all the time.” 

Tommy just nodded. “I hear ‘em, too.”

They were halfway along the wall when Ellie stopped, because now she had to speak again, as much as she didn’t want to. It was close to sundown now, all soft dark shadows making everything blurred.

“Did you ever bury them?”

She watched Tommy thumb his knife, watched it glint in the low light. He sucked on his teeth and sighs. “Didn’t occur to me until it was too late.” 

Ellie just nodded in understanding.

The fourth time was a spring, with the memories of her first seeing JJ still fresh in her mind, and rolling out of her mouth with ease instead of bitterness. She felt like a flame that was too bright, blurring out all the crumbling edges that was Tommy, and guilt climbed in her throat.

So she steered the conversation back firmly. “What was Joel like after she was born?”

A scoff, a roll of his eyes. “Scared shitless. I lived right down the street, but he’d call me at all hours of the damn day, askin’ this and that about the sounds she was makin’ or how she was sleepin’.”

They lapsed into a comfortable silence.

“You reminded me a lot of her.”

When Ellie didn’t answer, Tommy inclined his head, stumbling on. “That girl deserved so much more. Even in this world. That’s why…” He took a deep breath. “I knew I’d messed up, pushing you. Doing that to your family. He wouldn’t have wanted it.”

“No,” Ellie replied, voice softening. “No, he wouldn’t.”

He hadn’t asked about Dina. Not yet. Not until now.

“Well?”

Ellie had to suppress a smile, using her fork to push her remaining collards around on her plate. “It’s...it’s going.”

“It’s _going_ ,” Tommy replied, and there was the ghost of a smirk along his mouth.

And Ellie liked this, that her worry can cede to old humor - and not just her worry, but what’s been done, what hasn’t been done, what’s been broken, what’s been left intact. 

As Ellie left the Tipsy Bison, there was a swing in her step, and she whistled absently. She took the long route home, taking in the sunset.

How lucky they are, she thought - that two people who were swallowed in the anger and rage of themselves and of the world - chewed up and ripped apart and transformed into something unrecognizable - could crawl back to some measure of peace. 

The light was dying by now, but Ellie still saw Dina on her porch, catching the last of the sun’s rays. She saw Ellie in return, and leaned out over her porch railing.

Ellie went to meet her - not by mounting the porch steps but by placing one foot under the railing and pushing herself up, so she was directly in front of Dina. She held onto the railing and leaned in to plant a kiss over her smiling lips.

Dina laughed into her mouth and deepened the kiss for a moment, capturing Ellie’s bottom lip again even as she started to pull away. Dina’s dark eyes were sparkling, her hair cast in light browns, and God, Ellie loved her.

“You’re in a good mood,” Dina chuckled as she pulled away, fixing Ellie with an old, playful smirk, a silent question - _What have you done now?_

Ellie couldn’t help it - she practically giggled at this normalcy and leaned in to kiss Dina again, framing her face in her hands so that she’s only balancing on her feet. When they broke apart for a second time, Ellie nuzzled her, drinking in the relief that melted the wrinkles on her brow. 

Maybe _happy_ was too strong of a word, and maybe it would fade in an hour or two. Maybe it wouldn’t. Ellie held onto it all the same.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter earned this fic its E-rating, and a couple additional tags. As always, let me know if you want anything else tagged!

If Dina was honest with herself, she would say that they stumbled into the idea of living together - less with purpose, and more as they rediscovered all the mechanics that necessitated that they occupy the same space.

Mechanics - like who had time to go to the grocer, and who was going to pick up JJ at the daycare, and who was going to put the deer flank in the fridge to thaw overnight.

But at some point, for Dina, it became so much more than that.

It crossed Dina’s mind again and again, as the summer bronzed into autumn. Once, when she watched Ellie rake a thin layer of leaves into a pile in the backyard, watched JJ toddle into them. Again, when Ellie flipped through a photo album with JJ in her lap, gripping her shirt and babbling. And again, when JJ got fussy on the first night of Rosh Hashanah - so Ellie led him by the hand to his bedroom, murmuring something about not getting honey everywhere.

Dina sat with Robin and Susan a little while longer, and they traded stories about Jesse. From his parents: how he took to walking early; how he carried his favorite storybook wherever he went, for months; how he was convinced there was a monster under his bed until Robin pretended to jab it with one of his old hockey sticks. 

From Dina: how he figured out what her favorite flower was, and slipped it into her bag or whatever book she was reading whenever possible; how Ellie once pushed him into the lake, and he retaliated by pulling her in by the ankle; how the three of them would stay up past midnight playing board games, and Jesse would somehow be up first for patrol anyways.

Then they bid her goodnight, accepting her warm hugs and blessings for the new year.

Dina found Ellie in JJ’s room, swaying with him in her arms - still a soft, small bundle, now in his pajamas. “Know anything good for getting honey out of clothes?” Ellie whispered as Dina approached.

“Baking soda.”

Ellie quirked an eyebrow. “Really?”

“I honestly have no idea,” Dina replied, close now, and she inclined her head. “ _ Shana tova _ , baby.” Ellie bent to kiss her, and Dina smiled against her mouth.

JJ snuffled in Ellie’s arms as they broke apart. His eyes were still bright as Ellie lowered him onto his bed, brushing his hair out of his face as he yawned.

“Mummy stay?” he whispers, voice scratchy.

“I’ll read you a story, bubba,” Ellie replied, voice soft. Dina watched from the doorframe as JJ snuggled closer to her, as Ellie positioned the book so he could see the pictures. She was only into the second page when he was out like a light, chest rising and falling in an easy rhythm. As Dina eased the book back into its place on the bookshelf, she heard Ellie close and latch the bedroom window.

“Well that was easy,” Ellie murmured as she gently closed the bedroom door. “Terrible twos, my ass.”

“Hush,” Dina chided, and before she realized it, she took Ellie’s hand in her own. “Nightcap?”

The sun was almost fully down now. The house creaked pleasantly around them, settling into its own bones as they settled onto the couch. Dina swirled her tumbler of whiskey, watching it glow amber in the candlelight. She eased her legs over Ellie’s lap, pulling her close. “Did you have a good day?”

Ellie rubbed her thigh absently and then paused, as if she was holding her breath. Dina could see she was thinking, lining up what she wanted to say. It’s something her therapist had suggested - saying the hardest thing first, so it doesn’t build up in her mind, doesn’t overwhelm her.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here last year,” Ellie murmured, and Dina nodded, inching closer.

“Neither of us were ready, I think,” Dina added, and she watched Ellie deflate slightly, sink down into herself. “Hey.” She tipped Ellie’s face up, watching her eyes glint in the candlelight. “Remember what I said, yeah?”

Ellie swallowed. “Repentance comes with joy?”

“With  _ tremendous _ joy,” Dina said, smiling. “You’re here now, baby.”

“Yeah,” Ellie breathed deeply, and Dina sighed and nuzzled closer. Dina watched her - how her eyes tracked along the shadows, how she rubbed Dina’s thigh a little more firmly, how she exhaled heavily and rested her chin on Dina’s knee.

“What else, love?”

Ellie’s mouth quirked into half of a smile, but then fell back to that ponderous expression. “I want to...I need to know…” She paused again, and Dina waited with her in the darkness.

“She didn’t want to fight me,” Ellie breathed, and her eyes were far away, her voice low. “She’d already...she...She just took him. Told me where the boats were.” Ellie’s back was bowed, but her breathing wasn’t shaky - it was deep and rhythmic and steady. Ellie squeezed her eyes shut, and they were shining when she opened them. “I wanted to...to  _ die _ , Dina. Whatever was waiting for me at the end, there, I...I didn’t see any other way forward.”

Dina placed her tumbler on the coffee table, and she folded Ellie’s hands in hers and pulled her closer, as if she could cover Ellie completely in her warmth. She felt like something shifted in her, at the reminder of how close she came to losing Ellie, at how close Ellie came to losing herself. 

Ellie didn’t speak for a long time - she just took in their clasped hands, tinged orange in the candlelight. 

“Have I done enough?” Ellie whispered, and her tone was searching, almost pleading. 

Dina spoke softly. “I can’t answer that, baby. That’s between you and God.” Ellie sighed then, all the breath going out of her body. When she spoke again, her voice was small. 

“And if I don’t...If I…” She caved forward, and Dina reached for her, rubbing firm circles on her back.

“You can look for God in yourself,” Dina whispered. Ellie was trembling under her palm now. “And you can let it go, when you’ve done enough.”

“Enough,” Ellie repeated, as if she was turning the word over in her mind, the enormity of the concept, how unknowable it was. Dina reaches for her again.

“It’s okay to be loved,” she breathed. Ellie’s silhouette was a blue-black shadow in front of her, and Dina leaned close to feel the warmth of her skin again. “It isn’t selfish. It doesn’t negate all the work.” Ellie turned her head, and their noses brushed. “Your son, your family...Let yourself have this.”

Her voice was a whisper and it hitched at the end, as Ellie leaned into her touch. Her eyes were still far away, and Dina knew that even if the words reached her, the meaning still circled, just out of reach.

“Hey,” Dina finally said, reaching out to touch a lock of Ellie’s hair, shining red in the low light. “Stay with me tonight?”

She felt Ellie tense, watched a frown creep into her features, watched her lift her downcast eyes. Her voice was low when she spoke. “Is that okay?”

“It’s a new year, baby,” Dina replied, and she couldn’t keep the incredulity out of her voice. “Stay with your family.”

Ellie met her eyes then, and leaned forward to kiss her softly, slow and deep. Dina led her upstairs, flicking on the oil lamp that cast her bedroom in a warm glow. She turned to discard her shirt.

“I’ve been looking for this,” came Ellie’s voice, tinged with humor, and Dina turned to see her flipping through the copy of  _ The Time Machine _ that Dina had left on her bedside table.

“You’re welcome to it,” Dina said, pulling her hair back and ducking into the bathroom. When she returned, she was pleased to see Ellie stretched out in bed, nose buried in the book. Dina slid in under the blankets next to her, curling against the side of her body and sighing happily as Ellie’s free arm circled her shoulders. 

It was all awash in a soft ease that took Dina by surprise. There was no anticipation or grand, sweeping gesture or realization - just Ellie, laying down in her bed again. Holding her again.

“Wake me if you have a nightmare, yeah?” Dina murmured against Ellie’s neck, and she felt Ellie sigh minutely.

“I will,” Ellie responded, and then her lips pressed against Dina’s head, and Dina was drifting off. 

Not two hours later, Dina wrapped Ellie’s trembling body in her arms, rocking her through her terror and grief.

* * *

“Do you want to move in?”

The question was on Dina’s lips before she realized it, finally bubbling over after so many moments: after Ellie slept over for the second night of Rosh Hashanah, and had to use a borrowed toothbrush and borrowed clothes the next morning; after JJ squealed in happiness when Dina brought him downstairs to the sight of Ellie making breakfast; after Dina had gotten so used to waking up to Ellie’s warmth and kisses that a morning without them jarred her to her core.

She had forgotten what it felt like to wake up next to her, to roll over and fall into the depression left by her body; to find her auburn hair on her pillow and smell her rich scent of smoke and rain on her sheets. 

She had forgotten the sweet anticipation that rose in her as she followed the sounds of singing downstairs, to find Ellie swaying around the living room with JJ in her arms.

_ Well I'd like to visit the moon _

_ On a rocketship high in the air _

“Moon!” JJ replies. “Where’s the moon, Mummy?”

“Up in the sky, honey,” Ellie replied, chuckling as JJ craned his head to look out the front window. “We can’t see it right now, because it’s daytime.”

_ Yes, I'd like to visit the moon _

_ But I don't think I'd like to live there _

Dina leaned against the banister, watching JJ watch Ellie. “Did you go to the moon, Mummy?”

Ellie smiled. “I want to! Just for a visit, though.”

JJ’s eyes were round and wide. “Will you take me with you?”

Ellie buried her face in JJ’s hair at that, making him giggle and guffaw. “Of course.”

“My little goobers need to eat breakfast before they can go to the moon,” Dina interjected with a smile, as she left her place on the staircase and nudged them both towards the kitchen.

But it wasn’t until she was tracing the newly framed family photo later that evening - taken just before the new year - that the question left Dina’s lips. And Ellie’s smile was as bright as it was the night of the dance, open and beaming.

“If you’ll have me,” she murmured in reply. 

“Yeah?” Dina couldn’t help herself - her eyes flickered down to Ellie’s lips, and she smiled as Ellie walked up to her, right into her space.   


“Yeah,” Ellie whispered, all dark warmth - and then her lips were on Dina’s, hard and hot and insistent. 

And there was something about making a home with her again that took Dina back to the farmhouse - where she had felt like she was overflowing with love, drowning in it, finally seeing the pieces line up. Dina kissed Ellie back desperately, pulled her up to the bedroom because that was where Ellie belonged; and they tumbled back onto bed together,  _ their _ bed -

And then Ellie’s warm weight was on top of Dina, pinning her down, as Dina arched and moaned and -

“ _ No! _ ”

Ellie was off of her as if she had been pushed, and she staggered, crumpling against the hardwood, quaking and retching -

“Ellie, Ellie -” Dina rushed to her side, rushed to pull her back from wherever she had gone. “You’re home, I promise. You’re with me, it’s okay…” She rubbed soothing circles on Ellie’s back and wiped her damp face, shushing her all the while.

Ellie’s voice was raw, scratchy - “I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

“Don’t be, baby,” Dina breathed into her hair. “It’s alright.” She coaxed Ellie back into bed, murmuring that they could try again later, that Dina loved her, that there was always tomorrow.

The truth was that the reintroduction of sex into their relationship was not a floodgate, opening and suddenly making everything around it easy. Dina realized now that she had been holding it up in her head as some sort of endgame - but in reality, it shone a new light on old issues, and revealed hidden ones altogether.

So they become more purposeful, erected boundaries so that Ellie would feel safe, no matter how small the available space was. 

Not that they lacked for intimacy in their new partnership. Dina let Ellie plait flowers into her hair as it grew out, smiling as JJ tried to tug them out. They slept close, curled around each other; and when JJ cried and Dina stirred into consciousness, Ellie kissed the back of her neck and murmured “I got him,” slipping out from under their blankets and letting Dina curl up in the warmth left by her body. They cut new arcs through the ground floor of Dina’s house - of  _ their _ house, now - holding each other and swaying together.

But where making love had once felt easy and light, it now seemed more like stumbling around in the dark without a flashlight, not knowing something was there until it was disturbed, stepped on, and sent away, hissing and cowering.

They stalled out one evening, with Ellie groaning in exasperation as Dina climbed off of her, tugged the blankets back over their naked bodies. “It’s okay, baby,” she murmured, kissing Ellie’s collarbone lightly. “Hey. What do you need?”

“I need…” Ellie bit her lip, glanced away. Dina could see her thinking, see her gathering the flickers of her experience into something she hoped was coherent. “I need to slow down.”

“Okay,” Dina murmured. “Whatever you need, we’ll do it.”

Ellie pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. She sighed, and Dina watched her come up to whatever internal resistance she had built around this. 

“I need you to tell me that it’s okay,” she spoke into her hands.

Dina rubbed the flat of her palm against her belly. “Okay to come?” Ellie groaned into her hands, making muffled noises that sounded to Dina like “This is so  _ stupid _ .”

“Ellie,” Dina breathed, slowly lifting Ellie’s hands away from her face. “You deserve that, baby. You do.” When Ellie tried to duck away, Dina followed. “Hey, look at me,” she murmured, and she tipped Ellie’s jaw up so their eyes met. “You deserve to feel good, okay? Why else would we be doing this?”

“To make  _ you _ feel good?” Ellie blurted, and Dina muffled her laugh behind her hand. 

“You’re part of this too, baby,” Dina replied.

Ellie’s triggers were achingly familiar to Dina, distorted by her creeping fears. She refused to pin Dina under her. She clammed up one morning in bed when Dina encouraged her to wrap her arms around her from behind. Sometimes they made a surprising amount of progress, so that Dina found herself wet and open and begging - and then Ellie would freeze up before slipping inside her, hands shaking and breath coming fast. 

Dina had been ignoring this fear of hers - that somewhere out there in the world, Ellie had done violent, horrible things that brought her all too close to the beating, wet heat and vulnerability of another person.

There was, Dina supposed, a perverse kind of intimacy that came with killing. An opposing kind of intimacy, that saw all the tiny details of a person and dismissed them as inanimate. Regardless of how it had happened, the parallels were there now - and sex, instead of a source of emotional nourishment and closeness, had become a minefield of triggers.

“I want one thing to be  _ easy _ ,” Ellie groaned into her shaking hands one evening, leaning against the side of Dina’s bed. It was a night where they seemed to encounter difficulties at every turn - Ellie had had a panic attack earlier that day, but insisted to Dina that she was fine to have sex that night. She was easing inside Dina with her fingers when a  _ crash _ from outside made her withdraw and cower, gasping for breath.

They had a bit of a breakthrough when Dina gently nudged Ellie off of her one evening, running her hands lightly over her naked body. “Do you want to watch me?” she husked. “Watch how good you make me feel?”

Dina took her time, running her hands lightly over her body. She coaxed Ellie to settle against her side, nuzzled and kissed her as her body grew hotter. “Wanna know what I think about?” Dina gasped as she circled her own clit, ran a finger along her wet arousal. 

“Yes,” Ellie gasped against her hair. “Yes, yes…”

Dina rocked her hips, drawing more insistent circles with her fingers. “I think about you, baby,” she gasped. “You make me feel so good, Ellie,  _ fuck _ -” She whimpered as Ellie kissed her neck and cupped her breasts, her slow actions somehow just as arousing as Dina’s own ministrations between her own legs.

“Gonna come for you,” Dina gasped against Ellie’s mouth, smiling when she heard that low, rough tone in Ellie’s voice again - “Yeah, baby?” And Ellie’s palm was warm and firm on her thighs and on her belly, sometimes dipping down to rest on her rapidly-moving hands -

“You’re so  _ wet _ , Dina,  _ fuck _ -” Ellie gasped, as Dina twitched.

“For you, baby,” Dina whimpered, body twitching and jerking, and then - “ _ Fuck _ , Ellie, I’m coming, I’m coming -”

And she knew they’d done something good when Ellie cradled her closer, rubbing firm little circles on her belly and talking her through it - “That’s right, baby, you’re so beautiful -”

Ellie kissed her deeply as she came down, one hand trailing up her inner thigh, finding her wet fingers and threading them together. Dina tried to catch her breath quickly, running one finger along Ellie’s jaw so their eyes met. “Do you want me to touch you?” 

“But I didn’t do anyth-”

“ _ Baby _ ,” Dina gasped, as if she’d been personally insulted. She moved to straddle Ellie, noting her smile and the way her hands immediately went to Dina’s waist. “That was just as much you as it was me.” She traced a lock of hair that fell across Ellie’s forehead, smiling as Ellie turned to nuzzle against her palm. She watched Ellie’s features relax, watched another smile grow on her face.

When Ellie told Dina to touch her, Dina just smiled and worked over her until Ellie was gasping and rutting against her thigh. She stalled out before coming on Dina’s still-slick fingers - but Dina just touched her face, told her how calm and beautiful she looked, how present, finally home.

* * *

They planned it around JJ’s third birthday, so that there would be a clear before and after for him, something he could understand and expect. It didn’t hurt that Dina could frame the scenario like a birthday present.

“What’s he gonna expect next year, then?” Ellie had supplied when Dina explained her plan. A smile played along her mouth. “A family trip to Mars?”

“I think you can figure that out,” Dina replied, tapping her nose for good measure.

JJ was wide-eyed when she told him, surprise breaking over his features. “Where’s Mummy now?” he asked, looking around his bedroom as if Ellie would jump out from behind a bookcase. 

“Mummy lives in a different part of Jackson, honey,” Dina explained. “She was waiting to come live with us.”

“Why?”

Dina chewed over her prepared response one last time, walking that fine line between withholding and explaining something so complicated to someone so young. “She had to finish some things first.”

JJ glanced down at Ollie, who he held in his lap. “Like what?”

Dina rubbed her palms together, steeling herself. “Remember what I told you about Grandpa Joel?”

“He died,” JJ said simply. “Before I was born?”

“That’s right, honey,” Dina replied. “Do you remember what that means?”

JJ swayed back and forth a little, eyes flickering around the bedroom before landing on her again. “His body stopped working.” He cradled Ollie closer. “And Mummy was really sad.”

“She was.” Dina folded her hands in front of her. “Sometimes when people are sad, they spend some time by themselves, so they can remember all the good things about that person.”

JJ blinked. “That’s what Mummy was doing this whole time?” When Dina nodded, he continued at a murmur. “That’s a  _ long _ time.”

“It is, honey,” Dina replied, voice hitching.

JJ tugged on the hem of his shirt, twisting it between his fists. “Is Mummy still sad?”

“Sometimes,” Dina said, inhaling deeply. “But you know what makes her happier than anything?” JJ looked up at her, eyes bright, and grinned when Dina tapped his nose. “You, bubba.”

They dissolved into giggles then, and JJ leaned hard into Dina’s side. “Can Mummy read to me every night now?”

“Yes, honey,” Dina sighed, bending down to kiss the top of his head.

Afterwards, it became easier to be swept up in the domestic habits that defined their little life. Winter brought with it increased electrical responsibilities on Dina that could keep her occupied well into the night, so Ellie would draw Dina a bath, and then read to JJ until he fell asleep. Dina was usually drowsing in the tub by then, but Ellie would still slip into their bathroom, pressing kisses to the top of Dina’s head as she shucked off her clothes.

“Come in here,” Dina would sigh, cheeks reddened by the hot water, a playful smile darting across her face. Dina would rub the knots from Ellie’s back and coax the day’s highs and lows out of her, chuckling low in her throat as Ellie disparaged a teenaged stablehand. They would lay side by side, tangling their legs together in the cooling bathwater, letting their conversation wax and wane.

“What happened here?” Dina murmured one sleepy evening, as she ran her palm over Ellie’s side. The puckered scar was visible over the soapy water, twisted and rippled like a starburst. 

Ellie exhaled heavily, shifting a little closer into Dina’s arms. “Santa Barbara,” she supplied, pursing her lips and glancing away. Dina ran her thumb over the scar, waiting. “Got caught in a trap. Pulled me up, and…” She fixed her eyes on the ceiling, swallowed. “A  _ very _ inconvenient tree branch got in my way.”

“Baby,” Dina breathed, her concern bubbling over as she cradled Ellie closer to her body.

“I’m okay now,” Ellie said, voice firm, and Dina could see her trying to corral her worry. It didn’t stop her from taking Ellie’s face in her hands, from looking her directly in the eyes.

“You’re here,” Dina gasped, voice hitching slightly. “Right?”

“I’m here. I’m here, baby, I promise.” The bathwater sloshed as Ellie pressed Dina into the curve of her body, firming her arms around her. Dina pressed a kiss to the starburst before they got out, for good measure.

“Guess it’s too late for me to walk back anyways,” Ellie murmured around her smile, as she toweled her hair - as if either of them were expecting her to go back to her studio at this point. Dina just hummed and gently tugged her towards the bed, walking backwards. They meandered across the room and met each other with a kiss, soft and lingering. 

More often than not, Dina would wake early to find that JJ had snuck into their bed, a tiny space-heater curled between his parents. The only sign of him was a tuft of his black hair peeking out from beneath their blankets, sometimes accompanied by an arm thrown haphazardly onto Dina’s pillow. Sometimes Ellie had him pressed close to her, sound asleep with her arm secured around him.

Dina always woke up first on those mornings.

Moving was an incremental process - one box here, another two there. JJ treated each new one like a present, practically vibrating in excitement when Ellie arrived with another one in her arms. He stole Ellie’s shirts and tried to carry some of her heavier books, always asking if Ellie could read those to him later that night.

Her studio was down to its bare furnishings and a few boxes when Dina found Ellie there, standing in the low light.

“I feel like I’m leaving part of him behind,” Ellie murmured as Dina circled her arms around her waist, pressing a kiss to her shoulder. “He gave this to me.”

Dina nuzzled closer. “It’s okay to move on,” she murmured. “What would he want?”

She heard Ellie chuckle. “He’d want me to stop living in someone’s backyard like a hermit.”

“Smart man,” Dina said through her smile, letting it grow to a grin as Ellie turned in her arms and held her close.

“You sure you’re okay with this?” Ellie’s brow crinkled, studying her.

Dina exhaled through her nose. “We’ve already told JJ. We can’t exactly go back on that promise now, can we?” But when Ellie glanced away, Dina nudged her back. “I want this,” she whispered. “Do you?”

“Yes.” Ellie’s voice was low and sincere.

“Okay,” Dina sighed. She firmed her arms around Ellie’s waist and hummed, like they were a completed circuit. “Okay. Then we’re doing this.”

* * *

They worked around to it, eventually, in their own circuitous way - in the way that months passed without thinking because the work to get to  _ it _ was already embedded in the day-to-day, the week-to-week.

In Dina’s mind, it all counted - as sex, as loving her partner, as learning each other all over again. But she knew Ellie wanted to make her feel good,  _ craved _ it - could see it in how reverently Ellie kissed her when they were alone, in how her eyes darkened when Dina touched herself for her.

And Dina hoped, deeply, that Ellie didn’t just keep track of this time as the  _ before _ \- before things went back to how they should be, to how she wanted them to be. Dina hoped that she held their process up as something that was just as intimate and important as where they were going.

Still, it felt good - felt  _ right _ \- to revel in the moments of their little victories, when they could simply enjoy the fruits of their labor: the sweet, easy intimacy that came with knowing each other so well.

One particular morning, Dina had woken up to the watery, gray light of the rising sun, and Ellie pressing kisses along the bare skin of her upper back.

“What time is it?” she murmured, shifting back against the curve of Ellie’s body, shivering slightly as more skin was bared to the cool air.

“Early,” Ellie breathed. She gently moved Dina’s hair aside and leaned in close, pressing a kiss to her neck. 

The previous night’s victory still thrummed in Dina sleepily: the bright memory of them going home tipsy, swaying around their living room together, and then retreating upstairs, where she made love to Ellie until she let go and came on Dina’s fingers. 

That same ease she’d felt in Ellie when drifting off was still there now - that warm heaviness, that feeling of rightness.

“I think I owe you something,” Ellie murmured, her words warm and light against Dina’s skin.

“I think you do,” Dina replied around her chuckle. “But  _ please _ let me pee first.”

It took all of Dina’s effort to squirm out of the comfort of their bed, and out from under Ellie’s warm weight. When she returned, Ellie took her in her arms immediately. “ _ Now _ can I fuck you?” she breathed against Dina’s mouth, language undercut by the plying softness in her voice. 

“So crude. You can  _ ravish _ me.” Dina felt a wide grin split across her face - one that was tempered when she took in the intensity of Ellie’s gaze, and then the searing kiss that Ellie placed over her mouth. Dina angled her head and leaned into it, whimpering as she drank Ellie in. 

“Wanna make you feel so good,” Ellie sighed against her mouth, descending to her jaw. 

It was all fire and wet heat, and Dina gasped as Ellie worked her way down her neck, arousal heightening as Ellie ghosted over her skin. This was what she did so well - ratcheting up the heat and tension from the start, and then staying there and teasing Dina until she was begging. 

Ellie nuzzled at her stomach and then paused, looking back up at Dina. Her gaze was beseeching. “This is just us, baby,” Dina murmured, reaching down and pulling her back to the present. “Just you loving me.” She whimpered as Ellie sucked on her fingers, pressed a delicate kiss to the inside of her thigh. 

“Love you like this,” Ellie murmured as she ran her palms up Dina’s ribcage, sighing as Dina arched into her touch involuntarily. She kissed down the stretch marks on her belly, let her breath ghost between Dina’s legs for a moment before she withdrew again. “You’re so beautiful,” she breathed against Dina’s knee, leaning in to kiss what Dina knew was the mole on the inside of her left thigh. “Missed how you taste.” Dina inhaled sharply at that, reaching down and tangling her fingers with Ellie’s. 

“Need you,” Dina whimpered, rocking her hips. Ellie sighed as her mouth met Dina - first in a kiss, and then a long, slow press of her tongue - 

Dina’s whole body contracted and arched, save for her hands - one delicately tucked a strand of hair behind Ellie’s ear, and the other meandered along her upper back, rubbing circles there. Ellie worked and sighed as if she had nowhere to go, nowhere to be but here, kissing up one fold of skin and down the other, kissing Dina like she kissed her mouth - slow and tender and deep. 

Her hands rubbed along Dina’s forearms, up to the crooks of her elbows and down again in long, firm strokes - holding her, caring for her, making her whimper and keen and gasp Ellie’s name.

At some point Ellie pulled back from between Dina’s legs, kissed along her thigh. She lingered there, eyes closed. 

“Okay?” Dina murmured, reaching down to cup her cheek - and Ellie nodded and kissed her palm. “Feels so good, baby,” she whimpered, as Ellie settled between her legs again.

Absently, Ellie let one of her hands rub down Dina’s belly, down the crease of her thigh. She traced gently around Dina’s entrance with a fingertip, and Dina sighed and spread her legs further. “Please…”

“Please what?” Ellie’s smirked from between her legs, and Dina inhaled sharply - there was the same Ellie, from the weed den, so achingly familiar and so long gone.

“Don’t tease me, baby,” she whimpered, inhaling again when Ellie dipped down and lathed her tongue over her entrance.

“Tell me what you need.” Ellie’s eyes were dark and  _ alive _ , burning between her legs, and it made Dina want to reach for her again, desperate -

“I need you inside me,” Dina finally gasped. “Please, Ellie, inside,  _ please _ …” She whimpered as Ellie hummed against her thigh, mouthing and gently sucking on her skin, easy and unhurried. “Ellie,  _ please _ …”

Dina thought she would combust when Ellie finally pressed a finger inside her, and she tipped her head back and arched off the bed and gripped Ellie’s shoulders as she was filled. One hand scrabbled at the headboard for something,  _ anything _ to hang on to. She gasped desperately as her body rippled and spasmed - it had been so  _ long _ , but Ellie was finally  _ here _ , and Dina was shocked that she wasn’t coming already.

Ellie threw her free arm over her hips to steady her - “I know, baby, I know” - and leaned in to kiss her thigh. “I missed you so much,” she murmured, as Dina reached for her free hand.

Ellie tangled their fingers together and paused, breathing hard, leaning in to nuzzle her thigh again. Dina steadied herself. “Take your time, baby,” she breathed. “Feels  _ so _ good...” And there was something so tender about how slowly and gently Ellie reached inside Dina, until she could go no further.

She kissed the top of Dina’s pubic bone as she started to thrust languidly, making Dina cry out. “I’m sorry it’s been so long,” she murmured against Dina’s belly, and Dina gripped her free hand. “I missed making you feel good.”

Dina gasped and clenched as Ellie’s tongue met the top of her slit, and then the hard nub of her clit. “I missed loving you like this,” Ellie murmured against her flesh, and her voice was high and tight, as Dina’s cries rose to meet her.

Dina couldn’t begin to explain it, how empty she was and how full she was now, how she felt almost crazed - how she wanted Ellie to  _ take _ her, to make Dina’s body hers, to bruise her thighs and fuck her hard and hold her close and make love  _ with _ her; to open her up and see the parts of her that only Ellie was allowed to see, know the things that only Ellie was allowed to know, because Ellie was the other half of her soul, and there was no one else - 

But they had time now - they would have so much time to do all of that and more, and the fact washed over Dina with relief so strong that she thought she would cry -

Desperation and need crested in Dina’s voice as she clung to Ellie’s shoulders, pulled her up to be closer. “Please...I need -”

“I’m here,” Ellie gasped into her hair. “I’m here, baby, let me take care of you.” Dina felt something let go in her, something that she only became aware of in the process of letting it go.

“Ellie,” she gasped, frantic. “Ellie, Ellie, I...Don’t stop -”

“I know, baby,” Ellie murmured, and the line of chaste kisses that she pressed from Dina’s forehead to her temple was jarring in its simple tenderness. “I want you to come, come for me” - and her voice was shaky and pitched and Dina cried out -

“That’s it,” Ellie murmured, and Dina gasped desperately. “That’s it, Dina, baby,  _ please _ -”

And it was so much, it was  _ too _ much, the softness, the fact that Ellie was begging  _ her _ . Dina collapsed, overcome, crying out and gasping desperately and crying out again. She gripped at Ellie with all her strength, gasping Ellie’s name as her body curled and contracted and spasmed, and Ellie held her all the while and met her with cries of her own - “Yes, yes, yes, Dina, god yes -”

The world whited out.

It all came back slowly, in muted sounds and shapes and colors: in the beam of sunlight that shone across the hardwood floor, through which glittering dust motes drifted; in the way Ellie’s body half-sagged onto her, warm and heavy; in the way Dina inhaled deeply, and felt as if she were surfacing after being underwater for too long.

Ellie withdrew slowly, and Dina whimpered and sighed at the feeling of her fingers dragging against her flesh. Her eyes fluttered closed, but she could tell that Ellie was watching her face, especially by the ghost of an exhale she expelled as she freed her fingers and rested her hand on Dina’s low belly. 

“Come here,” Dina sighed, letting her eyes flicker open, tugging Ellie closer until their lips met in a slow, lazy kiss. 

“Good?” Ellie murmured against her mouth as she pulled back, just slightly. Her bangs fell into her face, and Dina’s smile grew into a laugh as she brushed them back. 

“Ellie,” Dina replied, hazy and wrung-out, like her name was the only thing tethering them together. “Ellie, Ellie…” It left her mouth over and over, a fluttering sound.

“I’m here. I’m here, baby, I promise -” Ellie held her until Dina swore they would melt into one being, until the whole world would fall away, hazy and meaningless -

She came to at the  _ clink _ of a glass against her bedside table, and warm pressure on her back, the sag of the mattress and Ellie’s voice, soft: “You should drink something, baby.”

Dina grumbled, but the kiss Ellie pressed to her forehead was enough to get her to sit up and take the offered water glass between her palms. Ellie finished it off when she was done, and then Dina leaned against her shoulder, absently pressing kisses along her skin.

“Hey.” Ellie’s voice was soft, but there was a new tension in it that made Dina’s brows furrow as she looked up. Ellie’s eyes were downcast, and she spoke to Dina’s hands. “I don’t think it’s gonna be that...that easy for me all the time.”

Dina tamped down her urge to scoff. “Ellie…” She tipped Ellie’s face up with a finger, so their eyes met. “Baby, you think I don’t know that?”

“I -” Ellie glanced away.

“Ellie,” Dina murmured, a little more firm. “Baby, I love being with you. I love how you make me feel. Even when we have to stop - that’s still me being with you. You understand?” She cupped Ellie’s cheek in one hand.

Ellie looked up then, and her eyes were wide and worried, even as she leaned into Dina’s touch. “Baby,” Dina continued. “There is no one who I’d rather be with. And if I have to repeat that everyday until you remember, then I will.”

It seemed to take Ellie a minute to gather herself to respond, and then a soft “Okay” left her mouth like a sigh.

Dina rested her forehead against Ellie’s, nuzzled her until Ellie smiled softly. “There’s my girl,” Dina breathed, and Ellie ducked her head to press a kiss between her breasts. Lazily, Dina wound her arms around Ellie’s shoulders, gently tugging her closer. “What time did we say we were going to pick up JJ?”

“A little before lunch?”

Dina gave a mischievous smile. “That was prescient of me.” Ellie just hummed in reply and moved back over her body, hovering over her and ghosting her lips over Dina’s neck.

“You want more?”

Dina grinned, sly. “You okay with that?” Her words bled into full on laughter as Ellie’s fingers danced along her ribs.

And Dina sank into some fuzzy, dark softness, and was vaguely aware of Ellie pressing slow, soft kisses on her body, down her neck, down her stomach, murmuring how beautiful she was. Dina whimpered and played with Ellie’s hair, brushing it to one side and then the other.

Ellie used one hand to spread her open, murmuring appreciatively about how soft and beautiful she was, and nuzzling at her flesh; the other arm she draped across Dina’s hips, to both hold her rocking hips in place and also weave their fingers together. Dina gripped that arm in her shaking hands like her life depended on it, as she spread her legs wider.

Time was nothing but a blur, and Dina couldn’t remember how long Ellie had been between her legs when she came again, just that it was a slow, meandering thing, maybe it took hours; and when Ellie murmured “Come for me” against her inner thigh, Dina was right there and gave in; and even as she cried out and twitched and spasmed, Ellie never wavered, just lathed her tongue against the hood of her clit and brought her down slowly.

Dina was gasping, and on each exhale she spoke, over and over and over again - “I love you, I love you…” Ellie kissed her between her legs and then kissed her way back up her body and cupped her cheek, and kissed her mouth, so tender and slow. Dina wound her arms around Ellie’s neck and let her body be pulled along into the rhythm of their kiss, buzzing with the taste of both Ellie and herself. She sighed against Ellie’s mouth when she pulled away.

Dina watched a small smile bloom across Ellie’s face, a smile that actually reached her eyes, that ended with a lopsided grin and a chuckle. She carded her fingers through Ellie’s hair. “What’re you thinking about?” 

Ellie turned to look down at her, one hand playing with the hair at the base of Dina’s neck. “That first time,” she murmured, sweet - and then she leaned down to whisper conspiratorially in Dina’s ear. “I think I’m  _ winning _ , babe.”

Dina groaned theatrically, one hand going to smack Ellie’s arm. “You  _ wish _ .”

Ellie just chuckled and pulled their blankets up further around them, cocooning them both in a dark warmth. Dina let herself doze, lulled into drowsiness by the feeling of Ellie stroking her back lightly. 

She murmured absently when she felt the bed shift - she felt Ellie press a soft kiss to her forehead, heard the sounds of her footsteps, and then the creak of the en suite bathroom door closing. By the time Dina righted herself enough to sit up, Ellie was mostly dressed, and perched next to her on their bed. 

There was something about the easy confidence with which Ellie tied her hair back and buttoned the cuffs of her shirtsleeves - while Dina sat naked and rumpled in bed, exhausted from what Ellie had done to her - that made Dina’s heart flip over. 

“You really gonna sleep with me and run?”

“I’m gonna sleep with you and then go pick up your child,” Ellie said, playfully curt. She turned to shift to her feet, but Dina’s hand found hers, stopped her.

“Ours,” Dina said, voice even and serious. “Our child.”

Ellie’s hand fluttered in hers and then firmed, and something rose behind her eyes, some mishmash of relief and joy. Dina couldn’t help herself - she leaned forward and captured Ellie’s lips in her own.

“Ours,” Ellie repeated as she pulled away. Then she stood up, seeming to come back to herself as she gently pushed Dina back down into the blankets. “By the way - you’re out of flour, babe. I’ll pick some up after I get JJ.”

“When were you looking in my -” But Dina cut herself off as Ellie turned on her heel and strode towards the door. She noted the heavy clouds outside - “Make sure he wears his raincoat!” - and Ellie raised her hand from the hallway in acknowledgement.

Dina collapsed back against the pillows and groaned into her hands. 

_ Let me guess - you’re gonna kill me? _

Ellie Williams would really be the death of her one of these days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References abound:
> 
> \- Ellie and Dina's conversation about forgiveness and God is inspired by BrennanSpeaks's lovely [The Requirements of Grace](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27991950).  
> \- The song that Ellie sings to JJ is [I Don't Want to Live On the Moon](https://genius.com/Sesame-street-i-dont-want-to-live-on-the-moon-lyrics), from Sesame Street.  
> \- Ellie's flashback and subsequent breakdown is also written about in Part II of Chapter 2 of [into orbit](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26551612/chapters/64881214). This is also true for the missing smut scene that occurs the night before the last section of this chapter.  
> \- The "I'm winning" banter is a reference to Chapter 7 of [into orbit](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26551612/chapters/66621139).
> 
> Finally, I am not Jewish, and will happily make any changes to this chapter if my representation of customs, holidays, etc. are inaccurate or offensive.
> 
> Find me on tumblr @watery-sun. Cheers!


	17. Chapter 17

JJ had asked her about the moon again: why it was always changing, moving, never in one place. He squirmed in her arms, neck craned to try to look out the window, one fist secured around her shirt collar.

“Is it hiding?” he asked, concern leaching into his voice - the same kind of concern that bubbled up when Wes’s dog barreled through Dina’s garden after a rabbit, ripping up new flowers; the same kind that emerged in worried tones and cries when he couldn’t find Ollie, even after Dina tried to explain, in soothing tones, that even elephants needed baths every now and then.

“Tell it to come out,” JJ said, in that expectant tone that implied that Ellie can do anything. “It’s okay!”

Ellie was smiling and assured as she replied - “Wait until next week, buddy.”

“You promise?”

He dogged her every day that week, as if Ellie could make the moon reappear in the sky with a flick of her fingers. It made her laugh that he thought such an absurd thing of her, made her thrum in happiness.

It went with the high that coursed through her when Dina asked her to move back in. When she could fall asleep on the couch with her son snuggled in her arms. When Dina’s warm weight on top of her was like a beacon, all soft skin and bright smiles under her hands.

And then, like a blast of cold water, like the cruelest reminder, she woke up one morning screaming.

She could feel Dina’s hands fluttering on her, trying to quiet, trying to catch the smoke of all her fear and grief, and shape it back into a person. It all reeked of familiarity and it reeked of _wrong_ \- of broken promises, failure, of creeping inevitability.

And she wanted to tell Dina - wanted to tell her how afraid she was that she hadn’t actually changed, that she was just temporarily pushed off her course by the strength of Dina’s love and conviction. That, really, she was doomed to repeat these old patterns, over and over, a brutal self-immolation.

She let them come, the days when she couldn’t touch Dina, the days when JJ cried and she scrambled and fumbled for the right thing to say. She tried to let them go, tried to remind herself that nothing good would come from the harshness that she wants to levy at herself.

Her choices felt heavy and dark, stretching towards a horizon that she can’t see. No matter how far she got from them, they’re beside her all the same. Because really, walking didn’t do much. Neither did running. It all ran parallel to her, on and on and on. 

Sometimes they faded out of her vision, becoming fuzzy shapes in the background. When JJ learned new words, more and more of them every day. When he rushed to tell her a story, excitable and wild and vibrating with energy. 

When Dina told her she’s good, perfect; kissed her in front of their friends, kept one arm around her waist as they walked through town, and didn't treat her like some delicate thing - laid out all her love for everyone to see.

And sometimes they’re all too clear, like when patrollers came home, smelling like iron and death, blurs of red in her periphery; when a nightmare was so real that she could taste it, breathe it, and no innumerable passes over window latches and door locks could make her mind quiet.

Thunderstorms have rolled in with the early summer, turning the bright daylight damp and cold, and spreading heavy, thick clouds across the sky like dark stains. They grumbled and boomed into the night, aggravating some members of Dina’s household more than others.

It forcibly reminded Ellie of the ocean, of how it pulled at her clothes and her backpack and made to drag her under, as heavy as her fear and shame and anger; and an expanse, _huge_ and utterly unknowable, so that all of her vitriol and rage seemed small and useless against this heaving beast that could snap her spine like a twig -

And all at once, she was awake.

Ellie shook herself, breathing heavily, momentarily mistaking the dark for suffocation. Shapes and shadows took their time to coalesce in her vision, and she scrubbed at her eyes with a sleeve.

 _Fuck_.

She was groggy and hazy and slow-witted, from already waking up that night with Dina shaking in her arms, Talia’s name on her lips. Dina had gasped and buried her tear-stained face in the crook of Ellie’s neck as Ellie soothed her, tried to share her pain.

Ellie rolled over. Dina was quiet now, profile lit softly in the low light, and it was then that Ellie realized that the sound of whatever woke her is back in the foreground of her mind -

In an awkward way, she was thankful that it’s JJ who has woken her up this time, rather than her own mind. Dina stirred now, reached for her, heavy-lidded and half-awake, and Ellie gently pushed her back into bed, murmuring what she hoped were soothing things.

“I got him, baby. Go back to bed.”

Ellie adjusted the blankets back over Dina’s prone form and eased off of the bed. She felt like she owed this to Dina, after the difficult day they’ve had. A day where she lingered too much in her anxieties, where every touch was a surprise, every sound could be a threat. It made Ellie _herself_ feel like a threat, like defensiveness was pulsing right under her skin, inevitable.

“How do I know that I’m doing the right thing?” she had asked that evening, pacing in front of Dina, who wiped her hands with a dish towel. “For him, for you…” Ellie gestured aimlessly, feeling ineffectual, even as Dina took her hands in her own.

The word that Dina used - _trust_ \- felt so alien in her brain, so unnatural. “Trust _who_?” Was she not taking things away from Dina by feeling all these things in this space? The way Dina clung to her in their bed, needed Ellie so much and so deeply - how was Ellie anything else other than an unnecessary distraction?

And then Dina had - not snapped at her, no. But Ellie could see the confusion in her, in herself, and now it was bubbling out of Dina on a tide of emotion -

“What do you want me to do, Ellie? Punish you? Tell you you’re a bad person?”

And then the darkening outside and all its emptiness and blankness was all she wanted.

Ellie stopped herself a few meters out from the porch, but didn’t turn around - just breathed hard, felt Dina's frustration (and her own, at that) crest behind her. But she stayed until her shadow, thrown into relief by the lights from the house, disappeared as Dina turned them all off for the night. It was a cold, lonely limbo.

Unsaid was her fear that she and Dina would always be compromised by their traumas, never fully available to their son - always diverging from each other, never offering a united front. It pained her to admit that she hadn’t understood the depths of Dina’s hurt before leaving the farmhouse, and now it was all too clear to her - and that, too, was its own pain.

At least her mother had left a letter, kind words that her child could take refuge in. Anna was memorialized in Ellie’s head, a conglomerate of shades of Maria and Marlene, never having done any wrong except dying - and even that couldn’t be her fault. 

Ellie found Dina, eyes red and puffy, sitting up in their bed. She sat, folded her tight into her arms, let words tumble from her mouth in a sigh. “I’m sorry, Dina. I’m so sorry.”

Dina took Ellie’s face in her hands, and it was so like that morning in the farmhouse that Ellie felt the floor go out from under her.

“I need to know that you’re going to stay here for us, Ellie,” Dina whispered - and every hitch in her voice is like a barb of pain in Ellie. “I _need_ it.”

Ellie leaned into her touch, turning her head so that her vision and its periphery were filled with the lines and callouses of Dina’s palm.

“When I left…” Ellie breathed out against her. “I thought I was sparing you. Both of you.”

“Do you really think that’s what you deserve?” Dina’s voice was soft now, aching. “We are _trying_ , baby. We’re going to make mistakes. We’re going to have hard days.” 

Ellie tugged her closer, trying to ground herself, to ground them both. “JJ loves you. I love you.” Dina kissed her then, soft and full, and Ellie threaded her fingers through her hair, holding her close even as they separated, so that Dina’s words fell on her lips. 

“I _want_ you, El. I want you at my table and in my bed -” And she was kissing tears from Ellie’s face now, gathering her closer. “Don’t tell me I’d be better off without you, Ellie. God…” Her voice hitched, truth and pain carried on the same current. “I would just be more _scared_.”

* * *

And then there were other days. 

Scattered amongst the difficult, the uneasy - little points of refuge. Her therapist encouraged her to linger on these days, even if it ran completely counter to her instincts. She lost track of the number of times that she had to talk down her own vigilance. 

It was easier one sleepy, lazy evening - Dina took her to bed, all soft smiles and warmth and soft touches, and left her feeling tingly and warm, with barely enough energy to trace her fingers along Dina’s skin.

“Found another one,” Ellie sighed, smiling and propping herself up on her elbows.

“Oh yeah?” Dina replied, languid and sleepy on her belly, wrung-out. Her olive skin was painted gold in the flickering light of the oil lamp.

“Mhmm.” Ellie hovered over the expanse that was Dina’s back, all scars and freckles and beauty marks. “Alpha -” She pressed a kiss to Dina’s skin. “Beta -” Another kiss. “And Gamma Arietis -” A third. “Those make Aries.”

Dina hummed under her, practically vibrating, as Ellie pressed a kiss to the base of her spine. “Think I could find the whole night sky on you.” She trailed her mouth upward, kissing the dip of Dina’s spine, between her shoulder blades, up to the base of her neck.

“Is that so?” Dina murmured, sly, and Ellie could practically hear the challenge in her voice. 

“With enough time,” Ellie clarified, and Dina rolled over, unfolding in the low light. Ellie moved back over her, a smile growing on her lips. “My love is made of stars, and I can think of no better use of time than to find -” One kiss, between Dina’s breasts. “Every.” Another, on her neck. “One.” Ellie kissed Dina’s mouth then, tasting her gently. Dina nuzzled her as she pulled away.

“Did you just come up with that?” Dina breathed, an eyebrow arched, one side of her mouth lifted in a smile.

“Maybe,” Ellie whispered in reply, grinning. They both slept heavily that night.

JJ asked one morning if Ellie could take him riding. He laughed the whole way to the barn, and Ellie couldn’t tend to Tulip for one second without him throwing another question at her.

“Thought you took him out here already,” Ellie said to Dina, and Dina’s lips quirked.

“He was saving this for you.” Ellie’s heart swelled at that.

They struck out for a field in Jackson, and their timing was good - there was mud, but not as much as it could be in spring. They kept the ride short to save the horses’ legs, but it was still enough to point out a hawk soaring overhead, little flowers already blooming in less-trodden ground, a fox that somehow wormed its way behind Jackson’s wall and darted from half-melted snowbank to half-melted snowbank.

On their way home, Ellie let JJ hold Tulip’s reins in his fists, putting enough slack in them so he won’t catch the mare in the mouth. If Tulip noticed, she gave no indication - just snorted and plodded along, agreeable to Ellie’s legs and weight as JJ laughed and babbled.

“Where do you wanna go next, buddy?”

They sidestepped over a log, backed up - “Beep beep!” JJ said, as they did so - and pivoted on the spot until JJ swayed, pretending to be dizzy. Afterwards, Ellie showed him how to feed Tulip carrots. He darted in front of the mare, carrot in hand, as she stretched her neck over the stall guard to reach him, until Ellie told him off for teasing.

The trickle of an early thaw didn’t stop another snowstorm from blanketing Jackson one morning. Dina offered to shovel and herded Ellie into the kitchen, where it’s all she could do to keep JJ still and quiet while Dina was occupied. He wailed until she scooped him up, letting the water boil for oatmeal, and carried him to the front foyer.

Dina was visible just outside, snow-dusted and red-cheeked, a smile playing across her mouth. Ellie knew she relished the physical activity, missed the familiarity of pushing herself in this way.

“There’s Momma,” she crooned. JJ placed his pudgy hands on the window, and Ellie wondered at love and assertion and if children had it right - if love should be displayed loudly and openly and always. What a simple thing, that eluded her for so long, now on bright display in the shape of her son.

Ellie plied JJ away from the window with the promise of breakfast, and by the time Dina tramped back inside, the kitchen table was set and Ellie had finished wiping the remnants of an oatmeal splatter from the far wall.

“Starting early on the new paint job?” Dina chuckled as Ellie wiped JJ’s face as well, before steering Dina by her shoulders to sit down in front of her food. The smile didn’t leave Dina’s face, even as she playfully swatted at Ellie.

“Eat, Momma,” Ellie chided. 

JJ copied her - “Eat, Momma!” - and Dina folded, though JJ squealed when she booped him on the nose from time to time. He retaliated by pretending to bite her arm, to which Dina overreacted with sufficient theater. 

Later, with Dina holed up in her study working on an old radio, Ellie escorted JJ to the grocer, where he insisted on telling her every letter he could read on the shelving signage. They sounded out _broccoli_ together, and JJ was able to get through it without collapsing into giggles by the third attempt.

Ellie sighed. How could a single, small person already know and see so much, and after such a short time?

She relayed the experience to Dina that night, stroking her bare back and smiling as Dina giggled against her skin. “At this rate, maybe he’ll actually enjoy leafy greens,” Dina supplied, and Ellie scoffed. Mercifully, Dina cut their discussion short by moving to straddle her again.

“Didn’t know all this vegetable talk turned you on,” Ellie said, running her hands along Dina’s thighs, dodging as Dina swatted at her.

“Fuck you,” Dina replied, though a laugh bubbled up in her throat, and continued as Ellie leaned up to kiss along her neck.

“Yes, please.”

It still surprised her when Dina said she wanted her, was so open about it, so unashamed. As if Ellie could give her something that she didn’t have. As if, in their stumbling, circuitous journey back to sex, Dina had found something that she knew she couldn’t find anywhere else.

And Dina seemed intent on reminding her of this as often as possible. Like when Cat and Alice were over for lunch, and over the salad she was tossing, and Dina fixed Ellie with a smile that was so complete and soft that it made her catch her breath.

She could still feel Dina’s hands on her from when they sleepily made love that morning, early enough so that by the time Dina shuddered and came around Ellie’s fingers, her body was painted in red and orange hues from the rising sun. 

That light still shone in Dina, and it was a wonder to Ellie that she hadn’t snuffed it out - that she, _Ellie_ , is the reason for it being there.

They bid Cat and Alice goodbye, and were on each other immediately, with an hour to spare before they said they’d go pick up JJ. But it wasn’t rushed - it was all deep breaths and lingering, deep kisses as Ellie folded Dina tight into her arms. It was one of her easier days, when everything was light and safe and familiar…

“Where?” Ellie sighed into her mouth, and Dina’s answer was immediate - “Here. Now.”

So Ellie lifted her in one smooth motion and set her gently on the marble of the kitchen island. It was a rare day when Dina wore a dress, and it was captivating in all the ways that made Ellie stumble - the way she spun sometimes to watch it twirl around her, opening like a blooming flower; the way JJ held onto the hem and trailed behind her, giggling. It was hardly spring, but Dina wore clothes like she demanded that the sun come out.

And it was captivating in other ways too, like how a flush painted her chest a soft red, and how the marks Ellie left on her breasts looked like petals; how her dress was both tugged down and hiked up, so that she was practically falling out of it, overflowing; how she tugged at Ellie’s hoodie and reached for the skin underneath, even though Ellie was already moving between her legs.

How she came so hard that Ellie had to steady her to keep her from falling; how she came again so frantically and desperately and _loudly_ that in the aftermath, as she breathed hard and Ellie sucked her arousal from her own fingers and licked along her sweat-stained neck, they both couldn’t help but laugh.

Ellie’s hair had come down and Dina carded her fingers through it, pushing it back and away from her face. “You want a haircut, baby?” she breathed, and Ellie laughed again, because it’s so jarringly casual and intimate and _Dina_ for her to say that, while panting and flushed and half-naked in her arms.

“You offering?” she murmured in reply, leaning in to Dina’s palm, then turning her head to press a kiss there.

They didn’t get around to it until much later, after dinner, and by that time it had become such a Thing - with Ellie asking JJ for suggestions, and said suggestions becoming more and more ridiculous and absurd (“A dinosaur!” JJ said once, giggling; or, simply, “Purple!”) - that JJ practically vibrated with excitement, and Ellie had to hold him in her lap to get him to be still.

She only had Dina take off a few inches, so that she could still tie it back. But still, when she came down for breakfast the next morning, she was prepared for JJ to stage-whisper into Dina’s ear - “Who’s that, Momma?”

It was an old joke by now, but there was a too-recent time when it stoked a a deep fear in Ellie, all too real, that her son would forget her. That in her absence from such an early time in his life - when he needed constant tending and nurturance - she would simply be erased from the emotional trajectory of his life. Maybe she would orbit him distantly, but instead of that closeness there would forever be a gulf. 

“Mummy, read with me?”

Ellie looked down at the tap on her leg, and there was JJ, thin book in hand. He had squirmed out of his chair partway through breakfast - only after he had finished his eggs to Dina’s satisfaction - and now took Ellie’s hand and dragged her to the living room.

They were well into their fifth book - and JJ was off on one of his many tangents, imagining backstories for every character he could - when he wormed his way under her arm, settling against her side. He stayed there for the rest of the morning.

* * *

The hallway was quiet - but shadows and hard angles threatened to jump out at her, to bump up against that voice in her head that talked her down. It managed to quiet her shaking hand as she knocked on JJ’s bedroom door. She kept one hand on the wall, letting her eyes adjust to darkness - there was no moon tonight.

The windows look cold and crisp in the darkness, in a way that made Ellie draw breath.

JJ had clung to her at bedtime, arms and legs wrapped around her, and she had to gently prise him off. He finally curled up in a tight ball, responding to her question about another story with a stiff shake of his head. Ellie let him be, but now worry at her response churned in her gut.

“What’s wrong, buddy?”

She sat on the edge of the mattress as JJ sat up, hair mussed, running a sleeve over his puffy eyes. Of late, he had started naming shapeless, amorphous things that lived in the dark corners of his bedroom and the creaks of the house, things that took Ellie back to her earliest years in the orphanage and the QZ, when she was small and hungry and fiery and always, always afraid.

That hunger and fire had seeped into her, curled around her bones, made itself a permanent home under her skin. It was something she knew Dina shared with her. Something she could never allow JJ to feel.

“Hey. I’m scared too.” 

“I don’t want the monsters to get me.” His words sent a chill to her core, put a sharp edge into her voice.

“Who told you that, honey?” When he didn’t answer, Ellie tipped his face up with a finger so their eyes met. His were so like his mother’s. She forced her voice to soften. “Hey. I’m not gonna let anything happen to you, okay?”

“You promise?”

And after everything she had done and seen, it felt not just natural but necessary to wrap him close, to whisper that promise into his hair. “You want me to stay here tonight?”

Ellie came to with Dina in the doorway of JJ’s bedroom, illuminated in a soft, gray light. She wiped her face, radiating worry. Her voice cracked when she spoke.

“I didn’t know…”

Dina cut herself off as Ellie beckoned her closer, pushed her hair back away from her face as she crawled into the child-sized bed. JJ stayed silent between them, warm and solid in sleep.

Ellie watched Dina drift off, watched the worry fade from her features as relaxation washed over her. Watched her fall into sleep like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

For now, it’s enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're winding down now, though there are a few more narrative beats I want to hit. There's so much more to explore, but I think that's better suited for a second part down the road.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope y'all don't mind the shorter length - thought this beat deserved it's own chapter.

Whatever gray pallor had settled over the space since her last time here had gone, but the buildings - the house and the barn, the dilapidated chicken coop - had the same abandoned air. They leaned in on themselves, inverted crumbling. It was as if the lack of residents, of bright and joyous everyday life, was causing them to collapse inwards.

Black holes were what came to Dina’s mind. Ellie had described them to her one winter night - how they drew in all that was around them, terrible and inevitable. And the event horizon, from which nothing - not even light - could escape. 

It made Dina shiver, and she was silently glad when Ellie just barely dimmed the oil lamp before they curled up together to sleep.

Now, Dina let the breeze carry her out towards the barn, buoyed along in that gentle current again. The grass parted around her, reached for her fingertips, an old friend. Her heart swelled.

Dina knew she could miss places, ache for them with a nostalgia that she thought was reserved only for people. She had missed places all her life - all the almost-homes, the not-homes. But this - this old burn, this tang of yearning - felt different.

Ellie had been silent for most of their ride up, letting Dina lead. Dina watched her, cracked a few jokes here and there, searched for Ellie’s small smiles. 

“Please don’t break your neck,” she had called, watching Ellie and Tulip negotiate a small ditch. It was still muddied and overflowing from the heavy spring rains they’d had the week prior. Once on the other side, Ellie just gifted her with a scoff and a casual shrug. She fell back into her silence as they continued on.

They had only circled the idea before going. Neither one had approached it head-on until one evening, when Ellie was a scattered, flickering thing, jumping at dropped cutlery and letting apologies pour from herself like wasted water. 

It took Dina a long time to pry it loose, to feel for its contours and sharp edges, to understand: how sharp Ellie’s abandonment felt, how Ellie refused to let it go.

“I love you,” Dina would whisper in the soft darkness of their bedroom. Unstated: _I want to move on_.

Ellie would nod, curl into herself. _I don’t know how_.

Dina saw the incivility of her grief and trauma - how it barged into their house without warning, made itself at home in their living room, stretched out in their bed. She felt its rancid, hot breath at her back when she found Ellie one evening, curled in a dark corner of their bedroom, shaking. 

She was pale as Dina steered her back to bed, and one clammy hand caught Dina’s wrist. Ellie’s voice cracked, eyes wide. “I left you again. I dreamed it, I left you, oh god -”

Dina wrapped her up, every shuddering inch. “You didn’t, baby,” she breathed, as Ellie fluttered in her arms like a broken bird. “I promise, you didn’t.”

But it soon became clear that something was lacking in her words.

“We don’t have to go back,” Ellie had murmured just hours earlier, still fuzzy in Dina’s vision from having just woken up. It was as if she had been waiting for Dina to emerge into consciousness, just to tell her that very thing. 

Dina shook her head. “If you need to,” she murmured, intertwining their fingers, “then we’ll go.”

She still didn’t quite know what they were doing here. A mourning, for the long-dead and rotten vegetables. A funeral, for the long-stopped cycle of sustainable domesticity that they had claimed out here in this abandoned place. A _kaddish_ for the oil-painted sunsets and sun-drenched mornings of solitude. 

The wavering soprano chant of the springtime songbirds settled over her, threatening to ease her away into her old childhood fantasy.

She found Ellie leaning on the porch railing, studying her hands. Dina sidled up next to her, letting one palm smooth over her low back. “Okay?”

Ellie swallowed, blinked a few times. The warm sunshine found a home in the green of her irises, turned them hazel. “Yeah.”

She folded one hand in Dina’s, straightened, and then turned away from the back gate. The porch creaked under her boots, an aching familiarity. 

“Just didn’t wanna go in without you.”

* * *

Dina couldn’t recall first learning it, but it had to be true - in how her earliest memories were of her pulling curtains away from windows, prying rusted nails out of rotten planks. Digging down into the earth, exposing the darkest places.

Perhaps she had just been born with the knowledge - that light destroyed the infection. 

A corpse, left to the open air, would not bloom like its brethren that sank into a moist, underground place. It bleached in the sun, brittle and broken, fodder for the animals and insects. 

Dina, being Dina, took this to extremes at an age when she was too young to know better. She would throw back the bedroom curtains, shake her mother and sister awake the moment the sun peeked over the horizon. Open up every window in their shaky little house, so that her hair was swept up by a strong cross-breeze on afternoons that thunderstorms collected on the horizon. 

Before she had left the farmhouse for the last time, Dina had locked it down - shuttered every window, closed every door. Her hands shook, her heart sat high in her throat, but she wouldn’t try anymore - if death wanted to grow here, she would no longer stand in its way.

Now, she dug her nails into the crack between a window and its frame. It groaned, shook, _screamed_ under her pressure - and then gave, rocketed upwards, so quickly that all of Dina’s exertion left her in a laugh. 

“Shit.” Ellie’s smile was audible. 

Dina shook the ache out of her fingers, responded with a smile over her shoulder. “Come on.” Ellie’s hand was warm in hers. “Gonna need your help with the rest of these.”

* * *

Dina sometimes imagined Ellie’s immunity as a visceral, alive thing, that grew around her ribs and coiled up her spine. How long had it festered inside her? How long had she hidden it away, behind the slats of her skin and the boarded-up windows of her silence? 

Up in their old bedroom, Ellie perched on the edge of the bare mattress and folded Dina into her arms. A single slow, intentional kiss was all that was needed for the creaking, rusted hinges of her ribcage to loosen, for her whole heart to rest in Dina’s hands. 

They laid back together, sweetly familiar, and let the sounds of what once was wash over them in easy remembrance.

* * *

The breeze was friendly against Dina’s sweat-stained skin, tracing along her back with Ellie’s fingertips. Playful and light-hearted like her laugh. Free.

* * *

The light was soft behind her eyes, tickling her awake, making Dina groan. She rolled over, and only then became aware of the sheet that tangled in her legs, wrapped around her shoulders. One blink, then another - eyes focusing and refocusing, fuzzy like her voice when she spoke. “Ellie?”

She forewent her clothes - folded in a neat pile at the foot of the mattress - in favor of wrapping the sheet more securely around herself. The sun had sunk lower in the sky, fleshing out the trees that swayed in the distance.

Ellie was in her old studio, dressed and stockstill. Dina leaned up on her toes to press a kiss to the nape of her neck, smiling as she inclined her head. 

“Is it bad that I want to take it home with us?”

Dina settled against her shoulder. “No,” she breathed against Ellie’s skin. “You’re allowed to remember him this way.” 

She watched Ellie gently pick up the guitar from where it had been placed against the windowsill, and set it carefully into its case. She looked up, and a smile tugged at one side of her mouth. “You gonna get dressed?”

Dina scoffed. “It’s still _my_ house,” she murmured as she stepped backwards, letting her hips sway and her eyelashes flutter. “I _think_ I can wear whatever I want.”

Ellie just hummed in approval.

Downstairs, the evening light painted Dina’s old kitchen in a gold that was as soft as a dream. Dina watched Ellie gently place a guitar case next to the front door, alongside her backpack. She then walked hesitantly, eyes down, skimming her fingers over the heavy wooden table that Dina had left behind.

Finally, Ellie held out her hand. “One more kitchen dance?”

Dina smiled, sly, and they folded together with familiarity. “Thought you would never ask.”

She expected Ellie’s body to flicker, in and out of the present. It was reasonable, she knew, to expect that this visit would be a trigger for her, would push Ellie into a space that she feared.

But she was solid and warm in Dina’s arms, humming a nameless tune as they rocked from side to side. Dina watched motes of dust tremble in the sun-drenched air, disturbed by their bodies. She buried her face against Ellie’s neck, smiled at the contented noise in Ellie’s throat.

“What are you thinking?”

Dina sucked in a breath, wrapped her arms a little tighter around Ellie’s shoulders. “I thought it would be...haunted,” she murmured into the shirt collar under her mouth. “That’s why I never came back.”

“Mm.” Ellie’s nose brushed the contours of her neck, then her lips. 

“I thought I’d see you, and it wouldn’t be you.” 

Ellie pulled back slightly at this, one scarred eyebrow rising. “And how about now?” she murmured, smiling crookedly. 

Dina scoffed, straightened Ellie’s collar, and nuzzled into the crook of her neck. Her pulse thrummed, slow and unwavering. 

“Still a stringbean,” Dina murmured, smiling as Ellie scoffed. “But my stringbean.” 

They swayed in the soft light for moments more, listening to the floorboards creak under their feet. For once, Dina didn’t hear the echoing laughter and chatter of a life that wasn’t - just the soft rhythm of Ellie’s breathing, leading her back to her life that was.

It made Dina unwind her arms from around Ellie’s neck, made her lean back. Expectation for her evening at home rose high. “Think we should head back?”

“Wait.”

Ellie had stopped, and now stared down at her feet. Her hair was backlit in the sunshine, fiery and bright. 

Dina skimmed her cheek with her fingertips, trying to pull her back. “Baby?”

“There’s...there’s nothing I can do to make up for what I did to you,” Ellie murmured. Her voice cracked at the start, then strengthened, and then words tumbled from her mouth. “I can’t go back and...and undo that night, as much as I wish I could.”

Dina dropped her hand to intertwine with Ellie’s, rubbing circles into her palms with her thumbs. “It’s okay, baby -”

But Ellie shook her head minutely, and Dina quieted.

“I think...I _hope_ -” And here her voice pitched upwards, “that I’m a stronger person now, and...and I hope I can give you what you deserve.” Ellie swallowed.

Dina could only nod, feeling her brows knit together, firming her grasp around Ellie’s fingers. “Of course, baby.”

“And if I can’t -” Ellie’s voice wavered, cracked, and Dina stepped closer, pulled in. “If I can’t, then we can work on it, together. Like with anything.”

She was fully crying now, tears cutting shining paths down her cheeks. Warmth gathered in the corners of Dina’s eyes as she nodded, whispering, barely audible - “Of course.”

Ellie looked up, and her gaze was harder, brighter. “I made you a promise,” she murmured. “I made you a promise, Dina, and I -...I’m going to keep it, I swear. But I don’t think I’ll ever be...done with all of this.”

“I know, baby,” Dina breathed. “I know.”

Ellie softened in front of her then, as if she had shrugged a great weight off of herself. Her next words were hardly above a whisper. “That doesn’t mean that...that I don’t want to keep trying.” 

All Dina could do was nod now, as her tears cut warm tracks along her jaw, down her neck.

“Dina. Dina…” Ellie was murmuring her name now, as if it was the only thing that could keep her tied to that moment. 

She had to look down at the ground to steady herself as she slowly dropped to one knee, and Dina’s fingers tightened in hers as she did so. The time it took to raise her eyes from the ground back up to Dina’s face seemed like an eternity.

Ellie could only repeat her name, over and over - but Dina understood all the same. And for the second time, in that exact spot, she cried. 

The word was stopped up in her throat, overcome by the swell of her emotion as she clung to Ellie all the harder. Found her smiling green eyes, shining and blinking rapidly. 

“Yes,” Dina gasped, and the word cracked in her mouth, so small and so heavy. 

Ellie lurched for her - “Yeah?” - and her voice pitched again, as Dina untangled their fingers and framed Ellie’s face in her hands. Pulled her up, into the light.

“ _Yes_.” 

Dina cried, and this time, Ellie held her, clung to her, and love firmed in every inch of her body. 

The side door stayed closed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's been a long, long time coming, and man am I glad to finally share it with y'all.


End file.
